Kate Vavasor had sent to her brother only the first half of her cousin’s letter

Kate Vavasor had sent to her brother only the first half of her cousin’s letter, that half in which Alice had attempted to describe what had taken place between her and Mr Grey. In doing this, Kate had been a wicked traitor — a traitor to that feminine faith against which treason on the part of one woman is always unpardonable in the eyes of other women. But her treason would have been of a deeper dye had she sent the latter portion, for in that Alice had spoken of George Vavasor himself. But even of this treason, Kate would, I think, have been guilty, had the words which Alice wrote been of a nature to serve her own purpose if read by her brother. But they had not been of this nature. They had spoken of George as a man with whom any closer connection than that which existed at present was impossible, and had been written with the view of begging Kate to desist from making futile attempts in that direction. “I feel myself driven”, Alice had said, “to write all this, as otherwise — if I were simply to tell you that I have resolved to part from Mr Grey — you would think that the other thing might follow. The other thing cannot follow. I should think myself untrue in my friendship to you if I did not tell you about Mr Grey; and you will be untrue in your friendship to me if you take advantage of my confidence by saying more about your brother.” This part of Alice’s letter Kate had not sent to George Vavasor — “But the other thing shall follow,” Kate had said, as she read the words for the second time, and then put the papers into her desk. “It shall follow.”
To give Kate Vavasor her due, she was, at any rate, unselfish in her intrigues. She was obstinately persistent, and she was moreover unscrupulous, but she was not selfish. Many years ago she had made up her mind that George and Alice should be man and wife, feeling that such a marriage would be good at any rate for her brother. It had been almost brought about, and had then been hindered altogether through a fault on her brother’s part. But she had forgiven him this sin as she had forgiven many others, and she was now at work in his behalf again, determined that they two should be married, even though neither of them might be now anxious that it should be so. The intrigue itself was dear to her, and success in it was necessary to her self-respect.
She answered Alice’s letter with a pleasant, gossiping epistle which shall be recorded, as it will tell us something of Mrs Greenow’s proceedings at Yarmouth. Kate had promised to stay at Yarmouth for a month, but she had already been there six weeks, and was still under her aunt’s wing.
Yarmouth, October, 186-.
DEAREST ALICE,
Of course I am delighted. It is no good saying that I am not. I know how difficult it is to deal with you, and therefore I sit down to answer your letter with fear and trembling, lest I should say a word too much, and thereby drive you back, or not say quite enough and thereby fail to encourage you on. Of course I am glad. I have long thought that Mr Grey could not make you happy, and as I have thought so, how can I not be glad? It is no use saying that he is good and noble, and all that sort of thing. I have never denied it. But he was not suited to you, and his life would have made you wretched. Ergo, I rejoice. And as you are the dearest friend I have, of course I rejoice mightily.
I can understand accurately the sort of way in which the interview went. Of course he had the best of it. I can see him so plainly as he stood up in unruffled self-possession, ignoring all that you said, suggesting that you were feverish or perhaps bilious, waving his hand over you a little, as though that might possibly do you some small good, and then taking his leave with an assurance that it would be all right as soon as the wind changed. I suppose it’s very noble in him, not taking you at your word, and giving you, as it were, another chance; but there is a kind of nobility which is almost too great for this world. I think very well of you, my dear, as women go, but I do not think well enough of you to believe that you are fit to be Mr John Grey’s wife.