ask you to help me, and
remain always

Yours sincerely,

"M. Bearwarden."

There is little doubt that had Dick Stanmore ever received this
touching production he would have lost not one moment in complying
with the urgency of its appeal. But Dick did not receive it, for the
simple reason that, although stamped by her ladyship and placed in the
letter-box, it was never sent to the post.

Lord Bearwarden, though absenting himself from home under such
unpleasant circumstances, could not therefore shake off the thousand
imperceptible meshes that bind a man like chains of iron to his own
domestic establishment. Amongst other petty details his correspondence
had to be provided for, and he sent directions accordingly to his
groom of the chambers, that all his letters should be forwarded to a
certain address. The groom of the chambers, who had served in one or
two families before, of which the heads had separated under rather
discreditable circumstances, misunderstanding his master's orders, or
determined to err on the safe side, forwarded all the letters he could
lay hands on to my lord. Therefore the hurt and angry husband was
greeted, ere he had left home a day, by the sight of an envelope in
his wife's handwriting addressed to the man with whom he believed
she was in love. Even under such provocation Lord Bearwarden was too
high-minded to open the enclosure, but sent it back forthwith in a
slip of paper, on which he calmly "presented his compliments and
begged to forward a letter he could see was Lady Bearwarden's that had
fallen into his hands by mistake."

Maud, weeping in her desolate home, tore it into a thousand shreds.
There was something characteristic of her husband in these little
honourable scruples that cut her to the heart. "Why didn't he read
it?" she repeated, wringing her hands and walking up and down the
room. "He knows Mr. Stanmore quite well. Why didn't he read it? and
then he would have seen what I shall never, never be able to tell him
now!"

CHAPTER XXV

COAXING A FIGHT

Mr. Ryfe could now congratulate himself that his puppets were fairly
on the stage prepared for their several parts; and it remained but to
bring them into play, and with that view, he summoned all the craft of
his experience to assist the cunning of his nature.

Lord Bearwarden, amongst other old-fashioned prejudices, clung to an
obsolete notion that there are certain injuries, and those of the
deepest and