Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/298

 she had attached to finishing the promised letter between Dover and London. The moment, however, that she stepped out at Victoria Station, it came back to her again, more pressingly than before. She had a sharp sense of guilt and treachery in having let the opportunity pass by.

To be sure, she could stop at a District Messenger Office, scribble a few lines and send them off to Sir Ian's obscure hotel; but that would not be at all the same thing to him. He would know that she wrote in a hurry, that she had put him off because she had been thinking of some one or something else, until too late to carry out her promise fully. She could put no such "thoughts" as he had begged for into a hastily scribbled note.

Never in her life had Terry Ricardo failed a friend. This man whom she now called "friend" had failed her, as few men have failed women once loved; but all the more for that reason, perhaps, would she not fail him in return. What a base, even common, thing was revenge! Women like poor Liane Rodache took revenge upon men who had injured them. The Teresina Ricardos of this world acted otherwise.

Yet, what could she do? Terry asked herself.

She had kept her word to Sir Ian, about remaining in London, and had telegraphed to Maud, begging an invitation for Nora Verney. The invitation had promptly come back by wire. Then, from Paris,