This afternoon, Madame Dupoirier went to Grandpont station in the hotel omnibus. She has just come back.
Madame says that when the 'bus drew up at the station "a compatriot" of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the words "Hôtel du Dauphin, Sainte Véronique-sur-mer," painted on the 'bus sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away; and he asked her (very politely, Madame says) if she knew whether "Mees Langley and Mees Breeggs" were still at the hotel. Madame said "Yes;" and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither.
I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like, and whether he spoke to her in French or in English. But I've no doubt it is Ruddington.
I call it abominable. If Susan were travelling in France with her parents, or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different. But this is outrageous.
I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Georgette's flower. A man who can read such super-exquisite meanings into the half-dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan, isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown, educated man has such sickly rubbish as the Language of Flowers at his finger ends, a lady's-maid is as much as he deserves.
What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon Sainte Véronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighbourhood, like a knight keeping vigil outside a woodland oratory where his milk-white ladye kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes--a scarlet-runner to mean "I have come post-haste," a convolvulus to mean "I am still hanging on," a thorny bramble to mean "I suffer."
Even the ardours of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint.
When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day.
Ought I to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a poor hunted beast in a trap, with no way to turn.