"It would interest me so much to know why your hands used to be so red,"
I asked after a little pause. "They are getting so much whiter now."
"I had work to do, dishes to wash, our old nurse was too ill, as well as
my mother, and my little brother then--" there was a break in her soft
voice. "I do not like red hands any more than you do. They distressed
my father always. I will try to take care of them now."
"Yes--do."
The evening post had come in, and been put by Burton discreetly on a
side table. He naturally thought such mundane things could not interest
me on my wedding night. I caught sight of the little pile and asked
Alathea to bring them to me.
She did. One from Coralie was lying on top and one immediately under it
from Solonge de Clerté! Alathea saw that they were both in female
writing. The rest were bills and business.
"Do you permit me to open them?" I asked punctiliously.
"Of course," and she reddened. "Are you not master here? How absurd to
ask me!"
"It is not; you are Lady Thormonde, even if you are not my wife, and
have a right to courtesy."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Why did you put--'To Alathea from her husband' on the bracelets? You
are 'Sir Nicholas' and not my husband."
"It was a bêtise, a slip of the pen; I admit you are right," and
indifferently I opened Coralie's effusion, smiling over it. I put up my
hand as if to shade my eye, and looked at Alathea through the fingers.
She was watching me with an expression of slightly anxious interest. I
could almost have believed that she was jealous!
My triumph increased.
I removed my hand and appeared only to be intent upon Coralie's letter.
"Perhaps we each have friends which might bore the other, so when you
want to have parties tell me, and I will arrange to go out, and when I
want to, I will tell you. In that way we can never have any jars."
"Thank you, but I have no friends except the Duchesse, or very humble
people who don't want to come to parties."
"But you will be making plenty of new friends now. I have some which you
will meet out in the world which I daresay you won't care about, and
some who come and dine with me sometimes, who probably you would
dislike."