ine.

"After giving the matter my best thought, I have concluded that it
will be well to enclose all the exhibits to you, and I now do this
in the hope that a serious study of them will enable you to share my
surprise at the moral and social conditions in which the business
could originate. I willingly leave with you the question which is
the more trustworthy, your letter to me or your letter to him, or
which the more truly represents the interesting diversity of your
nature. I confess that the first moved me more than the second,
and I do not see why I should not tell you that as soon as I had
your request I went with it to Mr. Armiger and did what I could to
prompt his compliance with it. In putting these papers out of my
hands, I ought to acknowledge that they have formed a temptation to
make literary use of the affair which I shall now be the better
fitted to resist. You will, of course, be amused by the ease with
which you could abuse my reliance on your good faith, and I am sure
you will not allow any shame for your trick to qualify your pleasure
in its success.

"It will not be necessary for you to acknowledge this letter and its
enclosures. I will register the package, so that it will not fail
to reach you, and I will return any answer of yours unopened, or, if
not recognizably addressed, then unread.

"Yours sincerely,

"P. S. VERRIAN."

He read and read again these lines, with only the sense of their
insufficiency in doing the effect of the bitterness in his heart. If the
letter was insulting, it was by no means as insulting as he would have
liked to make it. Whether it would be wounding enough was something that
depended upon the person whom he wished to wound. All that was proud
and vain and cruel in him surged up at the thought of the trick that had
been played upon him, and all that was sweet and kind and gentle in him,
when he believed the trick was a genuine appeal, turned to their counter
qualities. Yet, feeble and inadequate as his letter was, he knew that
he could not do more or worse by trying, and he so much feared that by
waiting he might do less and better that he hurried it into the post at
once. If his mother had been at hand he would have shown it her, though
he might not have been ruled by her judgment of it. He was glad that
she was not with him, for either she would have had her opinio