not overwhelmingly legible perhaps, but, as we say, "full of
character," on paper lightly blueish, in the prescribed corner
of which a tiny ducal coronet is embossed, above the initials
"B. S." curiously interlaced in a cypher.

When Peter received it, and (need I mention?) approached it to
his face, he fancied he could detect just a trace, just the
faintest reminder, of a perfume--something like an afterthought
of orris. It was by no means anodyne. It was a breath, a
whisper, vague, elusive, hinting of things exquisite, intimate
of things intimately feminine, exquisitely personal. I don't
know how many times he repeated that manoeuvre of conveying the
letter to his face; but I do know that when I was privileged to
inspect it, a few months later, the only perfume it retained
was an unmistakable perfume of tobacco.

I don't know, either, how many times he read it, searched it,
as if secrets might lie perdu between the lines, as if his gaze
could warm into evidence some sympathetic ink, or compel a
cryptic sub-intention from the text itself.

Well, to be sure, the text had cryptic subintentions; but these
were as far as may be from any that Peter was in a position to
conjecture. How could he guess, for instance, that the letter
was an instrument, and he the victim, of a Popish machination?
How could he guess that its writer knew as well as he did who
was the author of "A Man of Words"?

And then, all at once, a shade of trouble of quite another
nature fell upon his mind. He frowned for a while in silent