me from various
parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some of
them advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list of
steamers' sailings.

Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torture
can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myself
if I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned.

But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, saying
she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards the
end, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look of
triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand.

"There!" she said. "It's all up with Madame now. You've got the game in
your own hands, my lady, and can send them all packing."

The letter was addressed to my husband in London. Price had seized the
arm of Alma's maid in the act of posting it, and under threat of the law
(not to speak of instant personal chastisement) the girl had confessed
that both this letter and others had been written by our housekeeper
under the inspiration of her mistress.

Without any compunction Price broke the seal of the intercepted letter
and read it aloud to me. It was a shocking thing, accusing me with
Martin, and taunting my husband with the falseness of the forthcoming
entertainment.

Feeling too degraded to speak, I took the letter in silence out of my
maid's hands, and while I was in the act of locking it away in a drawer
Alma came up with a telegram from my husband, saying he was leaving
London by the early train the following morning and would arrive at
Blackwater at half-past three in the afternoon.

"Dear old Jimmy!" she said, "what a surprise you have in store for him!
But of course you've told him already, haven't you? . . . No? Ah, I see,
you've been saving it all up to tell him face to face. Oh, happy, happy
you!"

It was too late to leave now. The hour of my trial had come. There was
no possibility of escape. It was just as if Satan had been holding me in
the net of my sin, so that I could not fly away.

At three o'clock next day (which was the day before the day fixed for
the reception) I heard the motor-car going off to meet my husband at
Blackwater. At four o'clock I heard it return. A few minutes afterwards
I heard my husband's voice in the hall. I thought he would come up to me
directly, but he did not do so, and I did not attempt to go down. When,
after a w