Page:Hilda Wade (1900).pdf/76

as a matter of fact, is wholly unwor—I mean totally unfitted for him.'

'Let you show it to him? Like a bird! Why, Sissie promised me herself that if she couldn't bring "that solemn ass, C.," up to the scratch by Christmas she'd chuck him and marry me. It's here, in writing.' And he handed me another gem of epistolary literature.

'You have no compunctions?' I asked again, after reading it.

'Not a blessed compunction to my name.'

'Then neither have I,' I answered.

I felt they both deserved it. Sissie was a minx, as Hilda rightly judged; while as for Nettlecraft—well, if a public school and an English University leave a man a cad, a cad he will be, and there is nothing more to be said about it.

I went straight off with the letters to Cecil Holsworthy. He read them through half incredulously at first: he was too honest-natured himself to believe in the possibility of such double-dealing—that one could have innocent eyes and golden hair and yet be a trickster. He read them twice: then he compared them word for word with the simple affection and childlike tone of his own last letter received from the same lady. Her versatility of style would have done honour to a practised literary craftsman. At last he handed them back to me. 'Do you think,' he said, 'on the evidence of these, I should be doing wrong in breaking with her?'

'Wrong in breaking with her!' I exclaimed. 'You would be doing wrong if you didn't. Wrong to yourself: wrong to your family: wrong, if I may venture to say so, to Daphne: wrong even in the long run to the girl herself, for she is not fitted for you, and she is fitted for Reggie