which she had not observed before writing the direction. Selecting
another, she had thrown this back carelessly into the desk, meaning
to burn it when it should be convenient, and forgotten all about it.

The livid dints were deep and restless in Winston's nostrils, as
seen by the light of the tiny taper he raised to extinguish, when
his prize was secured. The devil supplied him with another crafty
hint, as he was in the act of folding one edge of Frederic's letter
that it might fit into the new cover. Why not strip off the letter
entirely, that it might seem to have been opened, read, and then
flung back upon the writer's hands with contumely? Half-way measures
were unsafe and foolish. Stratagem, to be efficient, should be not
only deft, but thorough; else it was bungling, not diplomacy. His
hand did not shake in divesting the closely-written sheet of its
wrapping, but in one respect his behavior was in consonance with the
gentlemanly instincts he vaunted as a proof of pure old blood. He
averted his eyes lest he should see a line the lover had penned to
his mistress. The letter slipped smoothly into the quarters prepared
for it--smoothly as Satan's mark usually goes on until his tool has
made his damnation sure.

"Well done?" said Diabolus.

"That was a clever hit!" chimed in his assistant, complacently,
after he had put the sealed envelope into his portfolio for
safe-keeping, and burned the torn one he had removed. "Nobody but an
idiot or a madman would persist in following a girl up after such a
quietus."

He replied to Frederic's note to himself shortly and with disdain,