“A real lady doesn’t betray her husband!” this virtuous woman exclaimed.
I burst out laughing, and I fear my laugh may have had an effect of
impertinence. “Especially to Miss Anvoy, who’s so easily shocked? Why do
such things concern _her_?” I asked, much at a loss.
“Because she’s there, exposed to all his craft. Mr. and Mrs. Pudney have
been watching this: they feel she may be taken in.”
“Thank you for all the rest of us! What difference can it make when she
has lost her power to contribute?”
Again Mrs. Saltram considered; then very nobly: “There are other things
in the world than money.” This hadn’t occurred to her so long as the
young lady had any; but she now added, with a glance at my letter, that
Mr. and Mrs. Pudney doubtless explained their motives. “It’s all in
kindness,” she continued as she got up.
“Kindness to Miss Anvoy? You took, on the whole, another view of
kindness before her reverses.”
My companion smiled with some acidity “Perhaps you’re no safer than the
Mulvilles!”
I didn’t want her to think that, nor that she should report to the
Pudneys that they had not been happy in their agent; and I well remember
that this was the moment at which I began, with considerable emotion, to
promise myself to enjoin upon Miss Anvoy never to open any letter that
should come to her in one of those penny envelopes. My emotion, and I
fear I must add my confusion, quickly deepened; I presently should have
been as glad to frighten Mrs. Saltram as to think I might by some
diplomacy restore the Pudneys to a quieter vigilance.
“It’s best you should take _my_ view of my safety,” I at any rate soon
responded. When I saw she didn’t know what I meant by this I added: “You
may turn out to have done, in bringing me this letter, a thing you’ll
profoundly regret.” My tone had a significance which, I could see, did
make her uneasy, and there was a moment, after I had made two or three
more remarks of studiously bewildering effect, at which her eyes followed
so hungrily the little flourish of the letter with which I emphasised
them that I instinctively slipped Mr. Pudney’s communication into my
pocket. She looked, in her embarrassed annoyance, capable of grabbing it
to send it back to him. I felt, after she had gone, as if I had almost
given her my word I wouldn’t deliver the enclosure. The passionate
movement, at any rate, with which, in solitude, I transferred the whole
thing, unopened, from my pocket to a drawer which I double-locked would
have amounted, for an initiated observer, to some such pledge.