Afterwards

"I say! What a tale--quite a Shakespearean ending, stage fairly littered with corpses," struck in Major Carstairs. "I wonder Tochatti didn't put the finishing touch by stabbing herself as well!"

"She did think of it, I believe," owned Chloe, "but the sound of quarrelling had brought other people on the scene, and Tochatti was of course arrested and the whole story investigated with more or less thoroughness. Being a pretty common story, however--for the Sicilians are a hot-blooded race--it was quite easy for the authorities to reconstruct the scene; and since Tochatti was innocent of any actual crime she was eventually released; only to fall ill with some affection of the brain which finally landed her in an asylum."

"An asylum!" Anstice whistled. "Yet one would have hesitated to call her insane----"

"Yes, now, but you must remember this is very many years ago. She recovered at length, and the only reminiscence of the tragedy was a marked aversion to using pen or pencil. She seemed to think that having wrought so much harm by her one attempt at letter-writing she would be wiser to avoid such things in future."

"Pity she didn't keep her resolve," commented Major Carstairs dryly; and Chloe nodded.

"Yes. We should all have been spared a good deal of trouble. Well, as you know, she entered my mother's service during her honeymoon in Italy, and was my nurse as a child. Now I come to the second half of the story. Tochatti chose to adore me from my early youth"--she smiled faintly--"and she always bore a grudge against anyone who did not fall down and worship me too. And this peculiar attitude of hers has a bearing on the affair of the letters. When Mrs. Ogden chose to quarrel with me, or at least evince a decided coldness, Tochatti's ready hatred flared up; and after the unlucky day when Mrs. Ogden cut me dead before half the county at a Flower Show, she determined to show the woman she could not be allowed to insult me with impunity."

"It certainly was a piece of unpardonable rudeness," said Major Carstairs warmly; and Chloe smiled.

"Yes--and at the moment I resented it very bitterly. But if Tochatti herself had not been there, in charge of Cherry, the matter would have dropped--and it was really unfortunate she should have seen the 'cut.' Well, it seems that Tochatti brooded over the affair, wondering how best to get even with the person who dared to act insolently towards me." Chloe's voice held just a tinge of mockery. "Twenty odd years of residence in England had taught her that one can't use daggers and knives with impunity, and I believe at first she was genuinely puzzled to know how to act. I suppose the thought of weapons turned her mind back to that Sicilian affair; and suddenly it flashed upon her that letters, after all, could be trusted to do a good deal of injury."