THE TOUCHSTONE
"And she wrote a clever letter?"
"Clever? It was Margaret Aubyn."
A great silence filled the room. It seemed to Glennard that the words had burst from him as blood gushes from a wound.
"Great Scott!" said Flamel sitting up. "A collection of Margaret Aubyn's letters? Did you say you had them?"
"They were left me—by my friend."
"I see. Was he—well, no matter. You're to be congratulated, at any rate. What are you going to do with them?"
Glennard stood up with a sense of weariness in all his bones. "Oh, I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. I just happened to see that some fellow was writing her life—"
"Joslin; yes. You didn't think of giving them to him?"
Glennard had lounged across the room and stood staring up at a bronze Bacchus who drooped his garlanded head above the pediment of an Italian cabinet. "What ought I to do? You're just the fellow
[ 45 ]
