e said indifferently. "I have offered all I am
willing to give for the letters; but there may be other ways of getting
them."

Mrs. Haffen raised a suspicious glance: she was too experienced not to
know that the traffic she was engaged in had perils as great as its
rewards, and she had a vision of the elaborate machinery of revenge which
a word of this commanding young lady's might set in motion.

She applied the corner of her shawl to her eyes, and murmured through it
that no good came of bearing too hard on the poor, but that for her part
she had never been mixed up in such a business before, and that on her
honour as a Christian all she and Haffen had thought of was that the
letters mustn't go any farther.

Lily stood motionless, keeping between herself and the char-woman the
greatest distance compatible with the need of speaking in low tones. The
idea of bargaining for the letters was intolerable to her, but she knew
that, if she appeared to weaken, Mrs. Haffen would at once increase her
original demand.

She could never afterward recall how long the duel lasted, or what was
the decisive stroke which finally, after a lapse of time recorded in
minutes by the clock, in hours by the precipitate beat of her pulses, put
her in possession of the letters; she knew only that the door had finally
closed, and that she stood alone with the packet in her hand.

She had no idea of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's
dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to
do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy
them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to
keep them--to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured
their possession. But how destroy them so effectually that there should
be no second risk of their falling in such hands? Mrs. Peniston's icy
drawing-room grate shone with a forbidding lustre: the fire, like the
lamps, was never lit except when there was company.

Miss Bart was turning to carry the letters upstairs when she heard the
opening of the outer door, and her aunt entered the drawing-room. Mrs.
Peniston was a small plump woman, with a colourless skin lined with
trivial wrinkles. Her grey hair was arranged with precision, and her
clothes looked excessively new and yet slightly old-fashioned. They were
always black and tightly fitting, with an expensive glitter: she was the
kind of woman who wore jet at br