His late wife would be chagrined at this speedy remarriage. Everything was for the best.
He wrote Connie an impassioned letter. He said that he lived but to make her his wife. That he longed to make up to her for any injustice his duty might have forced him to do her in the past. The way was clear now. It was written. He laid his name, his fame, the devotion of a lifetime, at her feet.
Connie was not of the stuff that could resist such an appeal. She was dazzled. Like many women who have once dispensed with the formality of marriage, she had an almost superstitious respect for it. It would reinstate her in the eyes of the world. It would prove that old affair to have been indeed a great love. Illiodor would never leave her again. They would grow old together. Not even Noel could raise the faintest objection to anything so peculiarly respectable.
Judy and Noel returned from Cornwall on the night train, and on Wednesday morning—they had been gone since Monday—Noel, fearing the worst, went straight to Connie and found that events had shaped themselves exactly as he had anticipated.
"Connie," he told Judy later, "looked like a cat who has eaten the canary."
