e must have touched the spring of the panel, but it seemed as
though the desk had suddenly opened its hand, closed and clasping those
letters for so many years. For a moment she hesitated to touch them. Then
she thought of all the time they had lain there and a feeling that Juliet
wouldn't mind and that the old bureau had told its secret without being
asked, overcame her scruples. She took the letters and sitting down again
on the floor, untied the ribbon.

There were no envelopes. Each sheet of paper had been carefully folded and
sealed with green wax, with the seal leaving the impression of the dove.
There was no address, and they had evidently been tied together in
chronological order. But the handwriting was the handwriting of Juliet
Mascarene fully formed now.

The first of these things ran:

"It wasn't my fault. I didn't create old Mr. Gadney and send him to church
to keep us talking in the street like that. I did _not_ see you. You
couldn't have passed, and if you did you must have been invisible. I feel
dreadfully wicked writing to you. Do you know this is a clandestine
correspondence and must stop at once? You mustn't _ever_ write to me
again, nor I mustn't see you. Of course I can't help seeing you in church
and on the street--and I can't help thinking about you. They'll be making
me try and stop breathing next. I don't care a button for the whole lot of
them. It was all Aunt Susan's doing, only for her my people would never
have quarrelled with yours and I wouldn't have been so miserable. I feel
sometimes as if I could just take a boat and sail off to somewhere where I
would never see any people again.

"It was clever of you to send your letter by P. This goes to you by the
same hand."

There was no signature and no date.

Phyl turned the sheet of paper over to make sure again that there was no
address. As she did so a faint, quaint perfume came to her as though the
old-fashioned soul of the letter were released for a moment. It was
vervain, the perfume of long ago, beloved of the Duchesse de Chartres and
the ladies of the forties.

She laid the letter down and took up the next.

"It is _wicked_ of you. My people never would be so mean as to quarrel
with your people or look down on them because they have lost money. Why
did you say that--and you know I said in my last letter that I could not
write to you again. I was shocked when P. pinched my arm as I was passing
her on the stairs and handed me your