He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had
come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat
made an attempt to find its place, when he discovered that it was not a
part of the volume. It was, he saw, a note, obliterated by creases but
with some lines still legible, hurriedly scrawled, by a woman:
"You must be more careful ... Your mother. So hot-headed, Howat. I can't
do what you ask. I have a headache now thinking about Felix and you and
myself. No one must find out." What followed was lost, then came a
signature that, with the aid of a reading glass, he barely
deciphered--"Ludowika."
That was the name of the woman, a widow, Gilbert's son had married. Her
first husband, Felix Winscombe, had died at Myrtle Forge during a
diplomatic mission from England.... An old man with a young wife! His
confusion, slowly resolving into a comprehension of what the note
implied, filled him with an increasing revolt. The earlier Howat, too,
like Jasper, in the tangle of an intrigue--not a public scandal and
shame, as had been the later, but no less offensive. In a flare of anger
Howat Penny crumpled the paper and flung it into the fire. There it
instantly blackened, burst into flame and wavered, a shuddering cinder,
up the chimney.
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