yn Mary has been throwing
herself at Will's head ever since they met last year on a P. & O.
steamer between Singapore and Colombo. She and her chaperon went on a
tour round the world, it seems, just before Evelyn Mary came of age. I
wonder they did not get engaged then, and can only conclude--as there
was no ME then to upset the apple-cart--that he did not know how rich
she was going to be. Anyway, I feel certain that it was Evelyn Mary who
was at the back of his plan for settling down as a respectable
stock-jobber. Molly Gaverick--who is a cat--said she knew for certain
Willoughby Maule came to England with the fixed intention of marrying
for birth and position or for money, and that he fancied, in me, he'd
found both--she says that he took his impressions of us from the
paragraphs in the Society papers and thought us much richer an bigger
than we are, and that now he knows better he thinks it safer to drop
birth and make sure of money.

The Bagallays made theirs in nails. Last year Evelyn Mary came into a
fortune of a quarter of a million. I'm told that it's absolutely at her
own disposal. She was an only child. A quarter of a million would be an
immense temptation to a poor and ambitious man.

And yet, Joan, I CAN'T believe that Will has been actuated by wholly
sordid motives. He may be an adventurer, but he is not a mean one.

Rosamond Tallant thinks it much more likely that because I didn't
introduce him to Aunt Eliza, and Chris and Molly never asked him to
dinner, he got the idea that I considered him good enough to amuse
myself with, but not good enough for serious consideration as a
husband. And it's quite true that I always shirked that point when it
was touched upon. If I must be perfectly honest with myself, I think I
was afraid of his putting me at the cannon's mouth and telling me I
must decide then and there to take him or leave him. Should I ever have
had the strength to give him up? He's so frightfully dear to me, that I
can't think of him now without a shudder at the thought of his
belonging to another woman. I never really believed it would come to
that. He once or twice hinted that there WAS a girl--the "nice English
girl" that I had chaffed him about. I had an idea that it was his way
of putting pressure on me.

The first time was the evening that I dined alone with him at the
Exhibition. Heavens! I grow hot this moment thinking that he may have
supposed I was in the HABIT of dining alone with me