‘It’s not a joking matter,’ said Bertie resentfully: ‘you wouldn’t find it funny if your mother opened all your letters.’

‘The funny thing to me is that you should let her do it.’

‘I can’t stop it. I’ve argued about it—’

‘You haven’t used the right kind of argument, I expect. Now, if every time one of your letters was opened you lay on your back on the dining-table during dinner and had a fit, or roused the entire family in the middle of the night to hear you recite one of Blake’s “Poems of Innocence,” you would get a far more respectful hearing for future protests. People yield more consideration to a mutilated mealtime or a broken night’s rest, than ever they would to a broken heart.’

‘Oh, dry up,’ said Bertie crossly, inconsistently splashing Clovis from head to foot as he plunged into the water.

It was a day or two after the conversation in the swimming-bath that a letter addressed to Bertie Heasant slid into the letter-box at his home, and thence into the hands of his mother. Mrs Heasant was one of those empty-minded individuals to whom other people’s affairs are perpetually interesting. The more private they are intended to be the more acute is the interest they arouse. She would have opened this particular letter in any case; the fact that it was marked ‘private,’ and diffused a delicate but penetrating aroma, merely caused her to open it with headlong haste rather than matter of-course deliberation. The harvest of sensation that rewarded her was beyond all expectations.

Bertie, carissimo [it began], I wonder if you will have the nerve to do it: it will take some nerve, too. Don’t forget the jewels. They are a detail, but details interest me.

Yours as ever,
Clotilde.

Your mother must not know of my existence. If questioned swear you never heard of me.

For years Mrs Heasant had searched Bertie’s correspondence diligently for traces of possible dissipation or youthful entanglements, and at last the suspicions that had stimulated her inquisitorial zeal were justified by this one splendid haul. That any one wearing the exotic name ‘Clotilde’ should write to Bertie under the incriminating announcement ‘as ever’ was sufficiently electrifying, without the astounding allusion to the jewels. Mrs Heasant could recall novels and dramas wherein jewels played an exciting and commanding role, and here, under her own roof, before her very eyes as it were, her own son was carrying on an intrigue in which jewels were merely an interesting detail. Bertie was not due home for another hour, but his sisters were available for the immediate unburdening of a scandal-laden mind.

‘Bertie is in the toils of an adventuress,’ she screamed; ‘her name is Clotilde,’ she added, as if she thought they had better know the worst at once. There are occasions when more harm than good is done by shielding young girls from a knowledge of the more deplorable realities of life.

By the time Bertie arrived his mother had discussed every possible and improbable conjecture as to his guilty secret; the girls limited themselves to the opinion that their brother had been weak rather than wicked.

‘Who is Clotilde?’ was the question that confronted Bertie almost before he had got into the hall. His denial of any knowledge of such a person was met with an outburst of bitter laughter.

‘How well you have learned your lesson!’ exclaimed Mrs Heasant. But satire gave way to furious indignation when she realised that Bertie did not intend to throw any further light on her discovery.

‘You shan’t have any dinner till you’ve confessed everything,’ she stormed.