It was coarse beyond belief. Only a man half out of his wits could have allowed any woman of his family to read such a thing. Many of the expressions she had never heard before, but it is a peculiarity of gross Anglo-Saxon to be readily understood. Nothing was lost on Phyllis, either in the description of the man she loved, or the accusations of the vilest kind leveled at herself. It was an infamous production, soiling and disgusting, nakedly spiteful, and nakedly pornographic.
She perused it unflinchingly to the end; studied the signature, "One who knows," and handed it back to her father.
"I thought people were put in prison for writing such letters," she said in an even voice.
"So they are," he returned curtly, "though that isn’t quite the point."
Again her composure startled him. "Is it possible you believe any of it?" she asked.
"Yes, I do," he said.--He was holding the letter in his hand, like a lawyer in court, cross-examining a witness. He was determined to get at the bottom of all this.
"Is it true you went to the theater twice?"
"Is it true that you wrote a letter to him?"
"And it’s true you met him afterwards on one of the streets in the Richmond district?"
"It’s true you let him kiss you there before everybody--embrace you--hug you like a silly servant-girl?"
She ignored the insult, and answered imperturbably: "It was a deserted place; I didn’t know any one was spying on us."
"And it’s true to-day you met him again?"
"Now, Phyllis, my girl, on your honor; I am asking you this as your father; I have the right to ask it, and the right to a sacredly truthful answer--the affair has gone no further than this?"
"And all the rest of it?"--He touched the letter.
He stumbled towards his chair; seated himself in it; reached for the cigar-box. He had expected a scene; he had expected tears, pleading, and repentance. He had a penetrating sense of having mismanaged everything. Perhaps he ought not to have shown her that letter. It had shocked her through and through, but not in the way he had intended. He had meant it to be like a surgeon’s knife--one sure swift stroke, and she was to rise cured, disillusioned. The effect had been disconcertingly different; he had affronted her to the quick, he had roused a defiance all the more to be feared because it was cool, subdued, controlled--the kind that is apt to last.--He lit his cigar, and blew out breath after breath of smoke. He must not make another mistake. He would think a little while before he began again.