was that it appeared to me I ought to tell you frankly that decidedly I can't undertake to produce that effect. In fact I don't want to!"
"It's very good of you, damn you!" my visitor laughed, red and really grave. Then he said: "You would like to see that fellow publicly glorified—perched on the pedestal of a great complimentary fortune?"
"Taking one form of public recognition with another, it seems to me on the whole I could bear it. When I see the compliments that are paid right and left, I ask myself why this one shouldn't take its course. This therefore is what you're entitled to have looked to me to mention to you. I have some evidence that perhaps would be really dissuasive, but I propose to invite Miss Anvoy to remain in ignorance of it."
"And to invite me to do the same?"
"Oh, you don't require it—you've evidence enough. I speak of a sealed letter which I've been requested to deliver to her."
"And you don't mean to?"
"There's only one consideration that would make me."
Gravener's clear, handsome eyes plunged into mine a minute; but evidently without fishing up a clue to this motive—a failure by which I was almost wounded. "What does the letter contain?"
"It's sealed, as I tell you, and I don't know what it contains."
"Why is it sent through you?"
"Rather than you?" I hesitated a moment. "The only explanation I can think of is that the person sending it may have imagined your relations with Miss Anvoy to be at an end—may have been told they were by Mrs. Saltram."
"My relations with Miss Anvoy are not at an end," poor Gravener stammered.
