Page:Duer Miller--The charm school.djvu/129

 when my eye happened to fall— Oh, Mr. Bevans, every one of them has a message on it. Elise—of all people! Do you want to see them?"

"I can't say I'm particularly keen to," replied Austin, holding out his hand for them, but it is doubtful if any one who attempted to take them from him would have left the room alive.

Strictly speaking, they were not letters, but scribbled sentences on the bottom of the accounts she turned in each week. "Why wouldn't you look at me this morning? Why was your tone so cold?" "You treat me like a dog, and yet I love you so."

For the first time in his life Austin had some idea of what Mrs. Rolles meant when she said things were vulgar. The idea of a red-faced accountant making love to the little princess seemed to him the vulgarest thing that had ever happened since the world was made.

"The damned beefy bounder!" he said. "I'd like to wring his neck."

"Oh no, no!" murmured Miss Curtis; "That would make such a scandal."

"I don't think you've read the worst one," said Miss Hayes, and he was grateful to her for retaining her habitual calm.