his
dressing-room to cleanse himself of London.

An uninteresting post. A receipt, a bill for purchases on behalf of
Fleur. A circular about an exhibition of etchings. A letter beginning:

"SIR,

"I feel it my duty..."

That would be an appeal or something unpleasant. He looked at once for
the signature. There was none! Incredulously he turned the page over and
examined each corner. Not being a public man, Soames had never yet
had an anonymous letter, and his first impulse was to tear it up, as a
dangerous thing; his second to read it, as a thing still more dangerous.

"SIR,

"I feel it my duty to inform you that having no interest in the
matter your lady is carrying on with a foreigner--"

Reaching that word Soames stopped mechanically and examined the
postmark. So far as he could pierce the impenetrable disguise in which
the Post Office had wrapped it, there was something with a "sea" at the
end and a "t" in it. Chelsea? No! Battersea? Perhaps! He read on.

"These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot. This one meets
your lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see if what I
say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner that's
in it.

"Yours obedient."

The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to
that he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of
black-beetles. The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity
to the moment. And the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the
back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had pointed
down at Prosper Profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "Prowling cat!"
Had he not in connection therewith, this very day, perused his Will and
Marriage Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with nothing to
gain, apparently, save the venting of his spite against foreigners, had
wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped and wished it
would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at his time of life,
about Fleur's mother I He picked the letter up from the carpet, tore it
across, and then, when it hung together by just the fold at the back,
stopped tearing, and reread it. He was taking at that moment one of the
decisive resolutions of his life. He would not be forced into another
scandal. No! However he decided to deal with this matter--and it
required the most far-sighted and care