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But it was good for her. It spoilt her life, as she had spoilt the life of the Laplaces. She had lost her faith in the Colonel, and here the creed-suspicion came in he might, she argued, have erred many times, before a merciful Providence, at the hands of so unworthy an instrument as Mrs. Larkyn, had established his guilt. He was a bad, wicked, gray-haired profligate.
Larkyn, and the tenets of the creed of the Colonel's Wife's upbringing. Over and above all, was the damning lip-strapped Waterbury, ticking away in the palm of her shaking, withered hand.
The packet, and a note containing a few remarks on the Colonel's calling-hours, were sent over to the Colonel's Wife, who wept in her own room and took counsel with herself. If there was one woman under Heaven whom the Colonel's Wife hated with holy fervor, it was Mrs. Larkyn. Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous lady, and called the Colonel's Wife "old cat."
Larkyn went home when her husband's tour of Indian service expired. She never forgot. But Platte was quite right when he said that the joke had gone too far. The mistrust and the tragedy of it which we outsiders cannot see and do not believe in are killing the Colonel's Wife, and are making the Colonel wretched.
Platte guessed that his own watch was in the Colonel's possession, and thought that the return of the lip-strapped Waterbury with a soothing note from Mrs. Larkyn, would merely create a small trouble for a few minutes. Mrs. Larkyn knew better. She knew that any poison dropped would find good holding-ground in the heart of the Colonel's Wife.
I should send the watch to the Colonel's Wife and ask for explanations." Mrs. Larkyn thought for a minute of the Laplaces whom she had known when Laplace and his wife believed in each other and answered: "I will send it. I think it will do her good. But remember, we must NEVER tell her the truth."
The Colonel's Wife said that somebody in Revelations was remarkably like Mrs. Larkyn. She mentioned other Scripture people as well. Larkyn. At this point she rose up and sought her husband. He denied everything except the ownership of the watch. She besought him, for his Soul's sake, to speak the truth. He denied afresh, with two bad words.
Larkyn, seeing that the Colonel had not cleared himself: "This thing has gone far enough. I move we tell the Colonel's Wife how it happened." Mrs. Larkyn shut her lips and shook her head, and vowed that the Colonel's Wife must bear her punishment as best she could. Now Mrs. Larkyn was a frivolous woman, in whom none would have suspected deep hate.
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