The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4886]
"Tired, honey?" he asked, on one of those occasions.
"No. Just talking to myself."
"Say a few nice things for me, while you're about it, then."
"Nice things! I don't deserve them."
"What awful crime have you been committing? Break it to me gently. You know my weak heart."
"Your tobacco heart!" she said, severely. "Well, I've been committing a mental murder, if you want to know the facts. Don't protest. It's done. She's quite dead already."
"Good gracious! And I have reared this young viper! Who is she?"
"I don't intend to make you an accessory, daddy."
But' behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to woman's heart-aches.
"What do you think it is?" he asked that night, when after her nightly custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain uneasiness.
"Who do you think it is, you mean."
"Very well, only the word is 'whom.'"
Mrs. Haverford ignored this.
"It's that Hayden girl," she said. "Toots. And Graham Spencer."
"Do you think that Delight - "
"She always has. For years."
Which was apparently quite clear to them both.
"If it had only been a nice girl," Mrs. Haverford protested, plaintively. "But Toots! She's fast, I'm sure of it."
"My dear!"
"And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow mother, and a money-making father - all Toots Hay den wants is his money. She's ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of Sundays."
The rector had precisely as much guile as a turtle dove, and long, after Mrs. Haverford gave unmistakable evidences of slumber, he lay with his arms above his head, and plotted. He had no conscience whatever about it. He threw his scruples to the wind, and if it is possible to follow the twists of a theological mind turned from the straight and narrow way into the maze of conspiracy, his thoughts ran something like this:
"She is Delight. Therefore to see her is to love her. To see her with any other girl is to see her infinite superiority and charm. Therefore - "
Therefore, on the following Sunday afternoon, the totally unsuspecting daughter of a good man gone wrong took a note from the rector to the Hayden house, about something or other of no importance, and was instructed to wait for an answer. And the rector, vastly uneasy and rather pleased with himself, took refuge in the parish house and waited ten eternities, or one hour by the clock.
Delight herself was totally unsuspicious. The rectory on a Sunday afternoon was very quiet, and she was glad to get away. She drove over, and being in no hurry she went by the Spencer house. She did that now and then, making various excuses to herself, such as liking the policeman at the corner or wanting to see the river from the end of the street. But all she saw that day was Rodney Page going in, in a top hat and very bright gloves.
"Precious!" said Delight to herself. Her bump of reverence was very small.
But she felt a little thrill, as she always did, when she passed the house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing all about them and liking them anyhow.
She stopped the car at the Hayden house, and carried