insult you by
supposing it to have been stolen. Consequently, it has come to you
with the leave and license of the person to whom it is addressed.
Consequently, that person is in your confidence. Consequently, he is
the first person I think of. You see the process? Very good. Permit me
a question or two, on the subject of Mr. Bashwood, before we go on any
further.'

"The doctor's questions went as straight to the point as usual. My
answers informed him that Mr. Bashwood stood toward Armadale in the
relation of steward; that he had received the letter at Thorpe Ambrose
that morning, and had brought it straight to me by the first train; that
he had not shown it, or spoken of it before leaving, to Major Milroy or
to any one else; that I had not obtained this service at his hands by
trusting him with my secret; that I had communicated with him in the
character of Armadale's widow; that he had suppressed the letter, under
those circumstances, solely in obedience to a general caution I had
given him to keep his own counsel, if anything strange happened at
Thorpe Ambrose, until he had first consulted me; and, lastly, that the
reason why he had done as I told him in this matter, was that in this
matter, and in all others, Mr. Bashwood was blindly devoted to my
interests.

"At that point in the interrogatory, the doctor's eyes began to look at
me distrustfully behind the doctor's spectacles.

"'What is the secret of this blind devotion of Mr. Bashwood's to your
interests?' he asked.

"I hesitated for a moment--in pity to Bashwood, not in pity to myself.
'If you must know,' I answered, 'Mr. Bashwood is in love with me.'

"'Ay! ay!' exclaimed the doctor, with an air of relief. 'I begin to
understand now. Is he a young man?'

"'He is an old man.'

"The doctor laid himself back in his chair, and chuckled softly. 'Better
and better!' he said. 'Here is the very man we want. Who so fit as Mr.
Armadale's steward to meet Mr. Armadale on his return to London? And who
so capable of influencing Mr. Bashwood in the proper way as the charming
object of Mr. Bashwood's admiration?'

"There could be no doubt that Bashwood was the man to serve the doctor's
purpose, and that my influence was to be trusted to make him serve
it. The difficulty was not here: the difficulty was in the unanswered
question that I had put to the doctor a minute since. I put it to him
again.

"'Suppose Mr. Armadale's steward meets his employer at the terminus