Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/286

write anything. He made one or two comments on her last letter to him and said very little about himself.

“This is a funny sort of place—

and I’m going to leave it soon for a tramp to the next mining town, by a short cut. ‘Sur ce, Madame et cousine, queue Dieu vous ayt dans sa très-sainte garde.’ “Yours, “ANTONY STE. CROIX.”

She smiled as she read. It was as if a strong warm hand had pressed hers, calming and reassuring her. It gave her courage to say to Aunt Rosa as they sat together at lunch that day, both the men being out: “I am afraid Uncle Markham will be disappointed with me when I tell him that I really have made up my mind to go back to England very soon now.” Then, conscious of ungraciousness, she was adding hastily, “You have been so good———” when Aunt Rosa interrupted curtly with a strange question:

“And what story are you going to tell them?”

“Story———” Pamela’s eyes were wide.

“Yes—story. Oh, England’s far enough away, and no doubt it doesn’t matter much what you do in a country where you’re little known, but you’ll find that you can’t behave as you have done without spreading talk that’ll probably have reached your grand friends in England long before you’ve ‘made up your mind’ to go back there.”

Pamela was white, but her voice was steady.

“What talk? What behaviour—of mine—do you mean? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, you don’t understand!” Aunt Rosa’s tongue was suddenly loosed and a stream of words set free, utterly without restraint. She did not raise her voice, yet some-