h I'm perfectly willing
to do so, unless I can find out what it is she's done."

"I don't know. I wish I did. There was a letter from her this morning to
Lord Thormanby, but he didn't show it to me."

"If it's in her handwriting," I said, "there's no use my saying I wrote
it. He wouldn't believe me. But if it's typewritten and not signed, I'll
say it's mine."

"Oh, I wouldn't ask you to do so much as that. Besides, it wouldn't be
true."

"It won't be true in any case," I said, "if I take even part of the
blame."

"But you mustn't say what isn't true."

Miss Battersby is unreasonable, though she means well. It is clearly
impossible for me to be strictly truthful and at the same time to claim,
as my own, misdeeds of which I do not even know the nature. I walked
across the hall in the direction of the library door. Miss Battersby
followed me with her hand on my arm.

"Do your best for her," she whispered pleadingly.

Thormanby was certainly in a very bad temper. He was sitting at the far
side of a large writing table when I entered the room. He did not rise
or shake hands with me. He simply pushed a letter across the table
toward me with the end of a paper knife. His action gave me the
impression that the letter was highly infectious.

"Look at that," he said.

I looked and saw at once that it was in Lalage's handwriting. I was
obliged to give up the idea of claiming it as mine.

"Why don't you read it?" said Thormanby.

"I didn't know you wanted me to. Do you?"

"How the deuce are you to know what's in it if you don't read it?"

"It's quite safe, I suppose?"

"Safe? Safe? What do you mean?"

"When I saw you poking at it with that paper knife I thought it might be
poisoned."

Thormanby growled and I took up the letter. Lalage has a courteous but
perfectly lucid style. I read:

"Dear Lord Thormanby, as a member of the Diocesan Synod you are, I feel
sure, quite as anxious as I am that only a really suitable man should
be elected bishop. I therefore enclose a carefully drawn list of the
necessary and desirable qualifications for that office."

"You have the list?" I said.

"Yes. She sent the thing. She has cheek enough for anything."

"Selby-Harrison drew it up, so if there's anything objectionable in it
he's the person you ought to blame, not Lalage."

I felt that I was keeping my promise to Miss Battersby. I had succeeded
in implicating another culprit. Not more than half the blame was now
Lala