envelopes years
ago, because he said that people of whom he made genealogical inquiries
paid more attention to stamped than to plain paper--it was a credential
of respectability. In Cullerne this had been looked upon as a gross
instance of his extravagance; Mrs Bulteel and Canon Parkyn alone could
use headed paper with propriety, and even the rectory only printed, and
did not emboss. Martin had exhausted his supply years ago, and never
ordered a second batch, because the first was still unpaid for; but
Anastasia kept by her half a dozen of these fateful envelopes. She had
purloined them when she was a girl at school, and to her they were still
a cherished remnant of gentility, that pallium under which so many of us
would fain hide our rags. She had used one on this momentous occasion;
it seemed a fitting cover for despatches to Fording, and might divert
attention from the straw paper on which her letter was written.

Lord Blandamer had seen the Bellevue Lodge, had divined the genesis of
the embossed inscription, had unravelled all Anastasia's thoughts in
using it, yet let the letter lie till he had finished lunch. When he
read it afterwards he criticised it as he might the composition of a
stranger, as a document with which he had no very close concern. Yet he
appreciated the effort which it must have cost the girl to write it, was
touched by her words, and felt a certain grave compassion for her. But
it was the strange juggle of circumstance, the Sophoclean irony of a
position of which he alone held the key, that most impressed themselves
upon his mood.

He ordered his horse, and took the road to Cullerne, but his agent met
him before he had passed the first lodge, and asked some further
instructions for the planting at the top of the park. So he turned and
rode up to the great belt of beeches which was then being planted, and
was so long engaged there that dusk forced him to abandon his journey to
the town. He rode back to Fording at a foot-pace, choosing devious
paths, and enjoying the sunset in the autumn woods. He would write to
Anastasia, and put off his visit till the next day.

With him there was no such wholesale destruction of writing-paper as had
attended Anastasia's efforts on the previous night. One single sheet
saw his letter begun and ended, a quarter of an hour sufficed for
committing his sentiments very neatly to writing; he flung off his
sentences easily, as easily as Odysseus tossed his