Well, reader, if Dinah had possessed only a few grains more of worldly experience it must have been clear to her that this letter never issued from The Bungalow. In the first place, by reason of the handwriting--when did a woman of Linda’s culture affect the Greek e’s, the up and down characters of an undergraduate? In the second, by the ignorance of common English etiquette which the use of the title ‘Mr.’ betrayed. But Dinah had no worldly experience at all, neither had she the imaginativeness which renders some equally untaught people nimble at guessing. In her mind was one engrossing thought--Gaston. In her ears rang the text of Mrs. Thorne’s message. ‘I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantleshelf. Tell your husband from me that he has won, that I am bankrupt.’ There was no room, in her tempest of heart and brain, for doubts that could have been favourable to her own peace. ‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel.’ She took the letter--at first with unwillingness--in her hands. She turned it over and over. The envelope was too small for all that the sender had forced it to contain; it adhered on one side, only. A touch, Dinah thought, shrinking from her thought, and the edges must come asunder. Her hands trembled so violently that she let the letter fall, with some force, on the ground. As she picked it up she saw that the narrow edge of adhering envelope had become narrower. An instant more of dalliance--and the temptation, strong and imperious, to open it altogether, had taken hold of her. ‘Be true to yourself,’ whispered a still small voice, the voice of Dinah’s better nature, ‘loyal, upright, as you have striven to be from the day you married Gaston Arbuthnot. Go away from him to-night, to-morrow, if you have not wifely courage to live your life out at his side. But go, with head erect, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, till the last.’ Then rose another voice, bolder of tone, of strain less heroic. ‘Poor, foolish, hot-hearted woman! Is it not possible that you are brewing a thunderstorm in a tea-cup? Why these turns and twistings of conscience? Linda Thorne, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, thinking no evil, make one of the silly wagers common among idle people who inhabit an idle world. The lady is the loser, calls at her friend’s hotel to discharge her debt, and meeting the friend’s wife, confesses, playfully, that she is bankrupt! Open that quarter-inch of yawning envelope, as Linda Thorne, no doubt, intended you to do. In Gaston’s absence, you have often opened letters addressed to him, by his own desire. Where is the fancied line between former right and present wrong. How could it matter to Gaston if you did see the contents of a packet in which there is probably not a syllable of writing?’ And Dinah’s heart was vanquished by the meanness of opportunity. She opened it.