Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should be back within two weeks.
And then, rapid decisions being at times dangerously like impulses, he sent a second one to Miss Exeter herself, which read:
Wish to express my complete confidence in you.
The days before those two messages came were trying ones in the Conway household, which was now divided into two hostile parties--Pearl, Durland and Antonia on one hand; Mrs. Conway and Dolly, occasionally reenforced by Miss Wellington, on the other. Miss Wellington did not make matters any easier by suggesting to Edna that something similar must have taken place in the case of Anthony himself--just what you'd expect from that sort of girl--that hair, that great curved red mouth.
She understood from dear little Dolly that Williams had told her—as much as a man could tell such a thing--that he could hardly have done anything else.
What Williams had really said, for few men are as bad as their adoring women represent them, was that her mother was taking the incident too seriously.
To be continued...
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