夜雨聆风I opened the fourth missive. It has been my good fortune to be troubledwith very few anonymous letters. An anonymous letter is, I think, themeanest and cruellest weapon there is. This one was no exception. It pur-ported to be written by an illiterate person, but several things inclined meto disbelieve that assumption.
“Dear Vicar,—I think you ought to know what is GoingOn. Your lady has been seen coming out of Mr. Redding’scottage in a surreptitious manner. You know wot i mean.
The two are Carrying On together. i think you ought toknow.
A Friend.”
I made a faint exclamation of disgust and crumpling up the paper tossedit into the open grate just as Griselda entered the room.
“What’s that you’re throwing down so contemptuously?” she asked.
“Filth,” I said.
Taking a match from my pocket, I struck it and bent down. Griselda,however, was too quick for me. She had stooped down and caught up thecrumpled ball of paper and smoothed it out before I could stop her.
She read it, gave a little exclamation of disgust, and tossed it back to me,turning away as she did so. I lighted it and watched it burn.
Griselda had moved away. She was standing by the window looking outinto the garden.
“Len,” she said, without turning round.
“Yes, my dear.”
“I’d like to tell you something. Yes, don’t stop me. I want to, please.
When—when Lawrence Redding came here, I let you think that I had onlyknown him slightly before. That wasn’t true. I—had known him ratherwell. In fact, before I met you, I had been rather in love with him. I thinkmost people are with Lawrence. I was—well, absolutely silly about him atone time. I don’t mean I wrote him compromising letters or anything idi-otic like they do in books. But I was rather keen on him once.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Oh! Because! I don’t know exactly except that—well, you’re foolish insome ways. Just because you’re so much older than I am, you think that I—well, that I’m likely to like other people. I thought you’d be tiresome,perhaps, about me and Lawrence being friends.”
“You’re very clever at concealing things,” I said, remembering what shehad told me in that room less than a week ago, and the ingenuous way shehad talked.
“Yes, I’ve always been able to hide things. In a way, I like doing it.”
Her voice held a childlike ring of pleasure to it.
“But it’s quite true what I said. I didn’t know about Anne, and Iwondered why Lawrence was so different, not—well, really not noticingme. I’m not used to it.”
There was a pause.
“You do understand, Len?” said Griselda anxiously.
“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”
