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"What letters?" he said, putting down his cup. He felt himself as helplessly vulnerable as a man who is lunged at in the dark. "Mrs. Aubyn's. The book they were all talking about yesterday." Glennard, carefully measuring his second cup of tea, said, with deliberation, "I didn't know you cared about that sort of thing."
"Those letters belonged to the public." "How can any letters belong to the public that weren't written to the public?" Mrs. Touchett interposed. "Well, these were, in a sense. A personality as big as Margaret Aubyn's belongs to the world. Such a mind is part of the general fund of thought. It's the penalty of greatness one becomes a monument historique.
But the intent and strained expression of St. Aubyn's features as he bent eagerly forward, hanging as if for life or death on the words which the brothers poured forth, reminded me that, in one respect at least, the spectacle before me presented a painful reality, and that for this desolate and lonely man every word of the Christmas tale told that evening was pregnant with import of the deepest and most serious kind.
"Upon my word, I feel extremely flattered!" exclaimed Aunt Charlotte, reddening. "A respectable-looking body, indeed! Well, it's something to know I look respectable. And who was this very patronising old person, pray? Some old nurse or other, I should say, to judge by her appearance." "She was the Countess of Merthyr Tydvil, St Aubyn's aunt," said Austin, enjoying the joke.
Anything of Margaret Aubyn's is more or less public property by this time. She's too great for any one of us. I was only wondering how you could use them to the best advantage to yourself, I mean. How many are there?" "Oh, a lot; perhaps a hundred I haven't counted. There may be more...." "Gad! What a haul! When were they written?" "I don't know that is they corresponded for years.
Aubyn's tenderness was not wholly disagreeable to his wife. When the pressure of work began to lessen, and he found himself, in the lengthening afternoons, able to reach home somewhat earlier, he noticed that the little drawing-room was always full and that he and his wife seldom had an evening alone together.
As they passed the bookstall in the waiting-room Flamel lingered a moment and the eyes of both fell on Margaret Aubyn's name, conspicuously displayed above a counter stacked with the familiar volumes. "We shall be late, you know," Glennard remonstrated, pulling out his watch. "Go ahead," said Flamel, imperturbably. "I want to get something "
"Some folks don't mind that sort o' thing, I s'pose; must have got accustomed to it somehow. Then there's those as is born ghost-seers, and others as couldn't see one, not if it was to walk arm-in-arm with 'em to church. Let's hope Mr St Aubyn's one o' that sort, seeing as he's got to live there. It's poor work being a baker if your head's made of butter, I've heard say."
Glennard stood motionless, overcome by the singular infelicity with which he had contrived to put Flamel in possession of the two points most damaging to his case: the fact that he had been a friend of Margaret Aubyn's, and that he had concealed from Alexa his share in the publication of the letters.
Aubyn's plagiarisms, to borrow a metaphor of her trade, somehow never seemed to be incorporated with the text. Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair. The fame that came to Mrs. Aubyn with her second book left Glennard's imagination untouched, or had at most the negative effect of removing her still farther from the circle of his contracting sympathies.
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