When he came out of his dressing-room she was apparently still in the hands of the maid. So he sauntered through the house as far as the library, and drawing a cheque-book from one pocket, fished out a memorandum-book from another, and began to cast up totals with a view to learning something about the various debts contracted at Shotover.
He seemed to owe everybody. Fortune had smitten him hip and thigh; and, a trifle concerned, he began covering a pad with figures until he knew where he stood. Then he drew a considerable cheque to Major Belwether's order, another to Alderdene. Others followed to other people for various amounts; and he was very busily at work when, aware of another presence near, he turned around in his chair. Sylvia Landis was writing at a desk in the corner, and she looked up, nodding the little greeting that she always reserved for him even after five minutes' separation.
"I'm writing cheques," she said. "I suppose you're writing to your mother."
"Why do you think so?" he asked curiously.
"You write to her every day, don't you?"
"Yes," he said, "but how do you know?"
She looked at him with unblushing deliberation. "You wrote every day. … If it was to a woman, I wanted to know. … And I told Grace Ferrall that it worried me. And then Grace told me. Is there any other confession of my own pettiness that I can make to you."
"Did you really care to whom I was writing?" he asked slowly.
"Care? I--it worried me. Was it not a pitifully common impulse? 'Sisters under our skin,' you know--I and the maid who dresses me. She would have snooped; I didn't; that's the only generic difference. I wanted to know just the same. … But--that was before--"
"Before what?"
"Before I--please don't ask me to say it. … I did, once, when you asked me."
"Before you cared for me. Is that what you mean?"
"Yes. You are so cruelly literal when you wish to punish me. … You are interrupting me, too. I owe that wretched Kemp Ferrall a lot of money, and I'm trying to find out how much seven and nine are, to close accounts with Marion Page."
Siward turned and continued his writing. And when the little sheaf of cheques was ready he counted them, laid them aside, and, drawing a flat packet of fresh bank-notes from his portfolio, counted out the tips expected of him below stairs. These arranged for, he straightened up and glanced over his shoulder at Sylvia, but she was apparently absorbed in counting something on the ends of her fingers, so he turned smilingly to his desk and wrote a long letter to his mother--the same tender, affectionately boyish letter he had always written her, full of confidences, full of humour, gaily anticipating his own return to her on the heels of the letter.