As it was, she approached Rudolph Musgrave with a fixed purpose this
morning as he smoked an after-breakfast cigarette on the front porch of
Matocton. And,
"Rudolph," said Mrs. Ashmeade, "are you blind?"
"You mean--?" he asked, and he broke off, for he had really no
conception of what she meant.
And Mrs. Ashmeade said, "I mean Patricia and Charteris. Did you think I
was by any chance referring to the man in the moon and the Queen of
Sheba?"
If ever amazement showed in a man's eyes, it shone now in Rudolph
Musgrave's. After a little, the pupils widened in a sort of terror. So
this was what Clarice Pendomer had been hinting at.
"Nonsense!" he cried. "Why--why, it is utter, preposterous, Bedlamite
nonsense!" He caught his breath in wonder at the notion of such a jest,
remembering a little packet of letters hidden in his desk. "It--oh, no,
Fate hasn't quite so fine a sense of humor as that. The thing is
incredible!" Musgrave laughed, and flushed. "I mean----"
"I don't think you need tell me what you mean," said Mrs.
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