Patricia regarded her for a moment. The purple eyes were alert, their glance was hard. "You seem to know all about this woman," Patricia began, in a level voice. "I have heard, of course, what everyone in Lichfield whispers about you and Rudolph. I have even teased Rudolph about it, but until to-day I had believed it was a lie."

"It is often a mistake to indulge in uncommon opinions," said Mrs.

Pendomer. "You get more fun and interest out of it, I don't deny, but the bill, my dear, is unconscionable."

"So! you confess it!"

"My dear, and who am I to stand aside like a coward and see you make a mountain of this boy-and-girl affair--an affair which Rudolph and I had practically forgotten--oh, years ago!--until to-day? Why--why, you _can't_ be jealous of me!" Mrs. Pendomer concluded, half-mockingly.

Patricia regarded her with deliberation.

In the windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but, unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped into the imbroglio--a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger against Rudolph Musgrave gave way to a rather contemptuous pity and a half-maternal remorse for not having taken better care of him.

"No," answered Mrs. Pendomer, to her unspoken thought; "no woman could be seriously jealous of me. Yes, I dare say, I am _pa.s.see_ and vain and frivolous and--harmless. But," she added, meditatively, "you hate me, just the same."

"My dear Mrs. Pendomer----" Patricia began, with cool courtesy; then hesitated. "Yes," she conceded; "I dare say, it is unreasonable--but I do hate you like the very old Nick."

"Why, then," spoke Mrs. Pendomer, with cheerfulness, "everything is as it should be." She rose and smiled. "I am sorry to say I must be leaving Matocton to-day; the Ullwethers are very pressing, and I really don't know how to get out of paying them a visit----"

"So sorry to lose you," cooed Patricia; "but, of course, you know best.

I believe some very good people are visiting the Ullwethers nowadays?"

She extended the letters, blandly. "May I restore your property?" she queried, with utmost gentleness.

"Thanks!" Clarice Pendomer took them, and kissed her hostess, not without tenderness, on the brow. "My dear, be kind to Rudolph. He--he is rather an attractive man, you know,--and other women are kind to him. We of Lichfield have always said that he and Jack Charteris were the most dangerous men that even Lichfield has ever produced----"

"Why, do people really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?"

Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's legerdemain.

And Patricia colored.

"Oh, well--! You know how Lichfield gossips," said Mrs. Pendomer.

III

Colonel Musgrave had smoked a preposterous number of unsatisfying cigarettes on the big front porch of Matocton whilst Mrs. Pendomer was absent on her mission; and on her return, flushed and triumphant, he rose in eloquent silence.

"I've done it, Rudolph," said Mrs. Pendomer.

"Done what?" he queried, blankly.

"Restored what my incomprehensible lawyers call the _status quo_; achieved peace with honor; carried off the spoils of war; and--in short--arranged everything," answered Mrs. Pendomer, and sank into a rustic chair, which creaked admonishingly. "And all," she added, bringing a fan into play, "without a single falsehood. _I_ am not to blame if Patricia has jumped at the conclusion that these letters were written to me."

"My word!" said Rudolph Musgrave, "your methods of restoring domestic peace to a distracted household are, to say the least, original!" He seated himself, and lighted another cigarette.

"Oh, well, Patricia is not deaf, you know, and she has lived in Lichfield quite a while." Mrs. Pendomer said abruptly, "I have half a mind to tell you some of the things I know about Aline Van Orden."

"Please don't," said Colonel Musgrave, "for I would inevitably beard you on my own porch and smite you to the door-mat. And I am hardly young enough for such adventures."

"And poor Aline is dead! And the rest of us are middle-aged now, Rudolph, and we go in to dinner with the veterans who call us 'Madam,'

and we are prominent in charitable enterprises.... But there was a time when we were not exactly hideous in appearance, and men did many mad things for our sakes, and we never lose the memory of that time.

Pleasant memories are among the many privileges of women. Yes," added Mrs. Pendomer, meditatively, "we derive much the same pleasure from them a cripple does from rearranging the athletic medals he once won, or a starving man from thinking of the many excellent dinners he has eaten; but we can't and we wouldn't part with them, nevertheless."

Rudolph Musgrave, however, had not honored her with much attention, and was puzzling over the more or less incomprehensible situation; and, perceiving this, she ran on, after a little:

"Oh, it worked--it worked beautifully! You see, she would always have been very jealous of that other woman; but with me it is different. She has always known that scandalous story about you and me. And she has always known me as I am--a frivolous and--say, corpulent, for it is a more dignified word--and generally unattractive chaperon; and she can't think of me as ever having been anything else. Young people never really believe in their elders' youth, Rudolph; at heart, they think we came into the world with crow's-feet and pepper-and-salt hair, all complete.

So, she is only sorry for you now--rather as a mother would be for a naughty child; as for me, she isn't jealous--but," sighed Mrs. Pendomer, "she isn't over-fond of me."

Colonel Musgrave rose to his feet. "It isn't fair," said he; "the letters were distinctly compromising. It isn't fair you should shoulder the blame for a woman who was nothing to you. It isn't fair you should be placed in such a false position."

"What matter?" pleaded Mrs. Pendomer. "The letters are mine to burn, if I choose. I have read one of them, by the way, and it is almost word for word a letter you wrote me a good twenty years ago. And you re-hashed it for Patricia's benefit too, it seems! You ought to get a mimeograph. Oh, very well! It doesn't matter now, for Patricia will say nothing--or not at least to you," she added.

"Still----" he began.

"Ah, Rudolph, if I want to do a foolish thing, why won't you let me?

What else is a woman for? They are always doing foolish things. I have known a woman to throw a man over, because she had seen him without a collar; and I have known another actually to marry a man, because she happened to be in love with him. I have known a woman to go on wearing pink organdie after she has pa.s.sed forty, and I have known a woman to go on caring for a man who, she knew, wasn't worth caring for, long after he had forgotten. We are not brave and sensible, like you men. So why not let me be foolish, if I want to be?"

"If," said Colonel Musgrave in some perplexity, "I understand one word of this farrago, I will be--qualified in various ways."

"But you don't have to understand," she pleaded.

"You mean--?" he asked.

"I mean that I was always fond of Aline, anyhow."

"Nonsense!" And he was conscious, with vexation, that he had undeniably flushed.

"I mean, then, I am a woman, and _I_ understand. Everything is as near what it should be as is possible while Patricia is seeing so much of--we will call it the artistic temperament." Mrs. Pendomer shrugged. "But if I went on in that line you would believe I was jealous. And heaven knows I am not the least bit so--with the unavoidable qualification that, being a woman, I can't help rising superior to common-sense."

He said, "You mean Jack Charteris--? But what on earth has he to do with these letters?"

"I don't mean any proper names at all. I simply mean you are not to undo my work. It would only signify trouble and dissatisfaction and giving up all this"--she waved her hand lightly toward the lawns of Matocton,--"and it would mean our giving you up, for, you know, you haven't any money of your own, Rudolph. Ah, Rudolph, we can't give you up! We need you to lead our Lichfield germans, and to tell us naughty little stories, and keep us amused. So _please_ be sensible, Rudolph."

"Permit me to point out I firmly believe that silence is the perfectest herald of joy," observed Colonel Musgrave. "Only I do _not_ understand why you should have dragged John Charteris's name into this ludicrous affair----"

"You really do not understand----?"

But Colonel Musgrave's handsome face declared very plainly that he did not.

"Well," Mrs. Pendomer reflected, "I dare say it is best, upon the whole, you shouldn't. And now you must excuse me, for I am leaving for the Ullwethers' to-day, and I shan't ever be invited to Matocton again, and I must tell my maid to pack up. She is a little fool and it will break her heart to be leaving Pilkins. All human beings are tediously alike.

But, allowing ample time for her to dispose of my best lingerie and of her unavoidable lamentations, I ought to make the six-forty-five. I have noticed that one usually does--somehow," said Mrs. Pendomer, and seemed to smack of allegories.

And yet it may have been because she knew--as who knew better?--something of that mischief's nature which was now afoot.