dearest, is the least I'd sacrifice to a friendship I thought extinct but which a merciful and mysterious providence has seen fit to return to us, like bread that was cast on the waters. I am at your back: remember that. Don't say you're "unworthy," my sweet girl; it brings tears to my eyes. Your heart is a wayward one, but there's no evil in it. Besides, when has "worthiness" ever been the criterion for friendship? The love of women is like the pull of magnets. Since the first day I met you on that beach in Kent, I've belonged to you, and always will.
If as you say it's absolutely imperative for you two to meet in a safe place, then I relent: I have told him to come to my house at half past five tomorrow (the sixteenth) and will expect you half an hour earlier. I need hardly say that I will remain in the room throughout, and I trust you not to allow him to take any further advantage of my hospitality.
Yours as ever—
***
In Fido's austere drawing-room at Taviton Street, Helen avoids the sofa's associations and picks an old straight-legged chair near the fire.
Fido draws her own chair closer. "Prepare yourself, my darling. You must be very strong."
"Oh yes?" says Helen, irked by Fido's sepulchral tone, and wondering why there's no cake on the tea table.
"You believe you know this man, for whom you've risked ruin?"
Ruin, echoes Helen scornfully in her head; really, she's read too many potboilers.
"Well. I took it on myself to make enquiries among my Scottish relations, for any insight into Anderson's character, and this morning I received some alarming information."
Helen smiles. "What have the detectives discovered, that he once lost a hundred pounds at cards?"
Fido's eyes rebuke her. "He's been linked to one of his cousins."
Helen waits. "Linked?"
"With a view to marriage."
The word makes her mouth curl up. "Whose view? Every eligible bachelor home on leave has the old hens of his family plotting to marry him off."
Fido shakes her head. "My informants were quite specific. This cousin, if you can believe it, has been linked formerly with the colonel's brother."
She's enjoying this, thinks Helen with a vast irritation, but she laughs. "That coda seems to explode the story entirely. So this girl makes eyes at his brother one summer, and Anderson the next, and means equally little on both occasions."
Fido sits back, sucking her lips. "Very well, if you don't tremble at having placed yourself in the shopsoiled hands of the kind of man who dallies with prospective brides—"
"I have no need to look as far as Scotland for imaginary bogeys," snaps Helen. "What makes me tremble is his imminent return to Malta, abandoning me to several more decades of misery with a corpse of a husband."
Water erupts in Fido's cocoa-brown eyes. "I didn't mean—" She puts a hand on Helen's magenta overskirt.
A distant doorbell: thank God.
Colonel Anderson is announced. He's only a little awkward. Fido, very much on her dignity, gives him a cup of coffee.
Helen considers various possible tones and plumps for light satire. "Well, Colonel, you're very good to spare us an afternoon before you take an express train north again. The Scotch climate must have special charms."
The gold moustache wobbles; a half-smile. "Not sure I catch your drift, Mrs. C."
"Oh, was I misinformed? Haven't the dowagers of the Anderson line taken to matchmaking?"
He relaxes into a laugh. (It's this face she loves, Helen realizes: a lad's loose grin.) "What can I say? It would be cruel to stop up their mouths."
Something in her unwinds. "But spare a thought for the poor coz who may be getting her hopes up."
"She's a very sensible sort, I wouldn't worry," says Anderson, leaving his chair and sitting down beside Helen, so close that his knee touches hers, through the layers of silk and linen and steel-framed crinoline.
Fido has moved to the round table and is looking through the Times. Her broad shoulders speak volumes.
"Look here, in all earnest," says Anderson under his breath, "I want to speak to you alone."
"You always want that," Helen murmurs silkily.
"Couldn't you persuade your faithful hound to allow us a momentary tête-à-tête?"
Helen raises her eyes to heaven. "I've had to swear to her that I'm cutting you off by degrees, like an opium habit."
Anderson tugs at his moustache. "How's Harry, these days?"
She makes a face. "An inert, brooding spider. He implies I'm a gadabout; complains I'm spending too much on modernizing the house."