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Updated: June 15, 2025
"After all," he thought, "it isn't the envelope that matters; it is the letter inside." Deeply he believed that just then. He was, indeed, under a sort of spell for the moment. Could the spell be lasting? He looked at Lady Sellingworth's eyes in the lamplight and firelight, and, despite a certain not forgotten moment connected with the Hyde Park Hotel, he believed that it could.
Then she changed the conversation. Craven felt that she was not fond of talking about herself. That day Craven walked away from Lady Sellingworth's house with Miss Van Tuyn, leaving Sir Seymour Portman behind him. Miss Van Tuyn was staying with a friend at the Hyde Park Hotel, and, as she said she wanted some air, Craven offered to accompany her there on foot.
Even if there was a God who attended to individuals, he would certainly not give her what she wanted just then. To do so would be deliberately to interfere with the natural course of things, arbitrarily to change the design. And something in Lady Sellingworth's brain prevented her from being able even for a moment to think that God would ever do that.
"We both want to know her secret," she said, as she put it into her card-case. "Our curiosity about that dear, delightful woman is a link between us." Craven looked into her animated eyes, which were strongly searching him for admiration. He took her hand and held it for a moment. "I don't think I want to know Lady Sellingworth's secret if she doesn't wish me to know it," he said.
The man at the bureau gave her Lady Sellingworth's note, and she took it up with her to her sitting-room. As she sat down to read it she noticed the words on the envelope, "Strictly private," and wondered what it contained. She did not recognize the handwriting as Adela's. She took the letter out of the envelope and saw again the warning words. "What can it be about?"
If she could not bring herself to take the one, then she would not keep the other. She must seek for peace in loneliness. Evidently that was her destiny. She gave herself to it with mocking eyes and despair in her heart. Three days later, soon after four o'clock, Craven rang the bell at Lady Sellingworth's door.
Miss Briggs, who had lived in Paris for quite thirty years, remarked: "Do you think they are more extraordinary than the people one sees about London?" "Yes, really I do. That old woman in the black wig over there, for instance, intrigues me. Where can she come from? Who can she be?" Miss Briggs looked carelessly round, and at once understood the reason of Lady Sellingworth's remarks.
"I hope he will. I like to see clever young men get on. And he certainly has something in him." "Yes, I think so too. By the way, he seems tremendously taken with Miss Van Tuyn." As the world's governess said this he let his small hazel eyes fix themselves rather intently on Lady Sellingworth's face. He saw no change of expression there.
But she had felt, had really felt as if in her very entrails, for a moment the appeal of youth. And she could never forget that, and, having responded, she knew that she could never struggle against youth again. Beryl had conquered her without knowing it. The winter night was dark when Miss Van Tuyn stood in the hall of Lady Sellingworth's house waiting for the footman to find a taxicab for her.
He looked a distinguished old man as he sat there but he looked old. "Is it possible that I look at all that sort of age?" was Lady Sellingworth's thought as, for a brief instant, she contemplated him, with an intensity, a sort of almost fierce sharpness which she was scarcely aware of. He looked up, made a twitching movement; his pince-nez fell to his black coat, and he got up alertly. "Adela!"
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