夜雨聆风And she had been genu-inely fond of Dora Bunner and remembered her as a symbol of her owngay carefree days at school. Anyway, on an impulse, she answered Dora’sletter in person. And very surprised Dora must have been! She’d writtento Letitia and the sister who turned up in answer to her letter was Char-lotte. There was never any question of pretending to be Letitia to Dora.
Dora was one of the few old friends who had been admitted to see Char-lotte in her lonely and unhappy days.
“And because she knew that Dora would look at the matter in exactlythe same way as she did herself, she told Dora what she had done. Doraapproved wholeheartedly. In her confused muddle- headed mind itseemed only right that dear Lotty should not be done out of her inherit-ance by Letty’s untimely death. Lotty deserved a reward for all the patientsuffering she had borne so bravely. It would have been most unfair if allthat money should have gone to somebody nobody had ever heard of.
“She quite understood that nothing must be allowed to get out. It waslike an extra pound of butter. You couldn’t talk about it but there wasnothing wrong about having it. So Dora came to Little Paddocks—and verysoon Charlotte began to understand that she had made a terrible mistake.
It was not merely the fact that Dora Bunner, with her muddles and hermistakes and her bungling, was quite maddening to live with. Charlottecould have put up with that—because she really cared for Dora, and any-way knew from the doctor that Dora hadn’t got a very long time to live.
But Dora very soon became a real danger. Though Charlotte and Letitiahad called each other by their full names, Dora was the kind of personwho always used abbreviations. To her the sisters had always been Lettyand Lotty. And though she schooled her tongue resolutely to call herfriend Letty—the old name often slipped out. Memories of the past, too,were rather apt to come to her tongue—and Charlotte had constantly to beon the watch to check these forgetful allusions. It began to get on hernerves.
“Still, nobody was likely to pay attention to Dora’s inconsistencies. Thereal blow to Charlotte’s security came, as I say, when she was recognizedand spoken to by Rudi Scherz at the Royal Spa Hotel.
