ters he went up to 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
post-mark. 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! 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 re-read 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