Olivia was not quite sure of the technical terms, so she answered nothing, but smiled a smile of interested sympathy. She remembered suddenly that perhaps he had brought mails. She asked him. “Mails? Yes, madam. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh I’ve brought the mails. They’re in his Excellency’s hands.” “None for you, Mrs. Stukeley, I’m afraid,” said Howard. “Captain Margaret had one.” “Captain Margaret?” said Lewin quickly. “Do you know a Captain Margaret here?” Stukeley pushed back his chair, and seemed to fumble in his pocket. Margaret looked up quickly from the cracking of a nut. “I am he,” he said quietly. “You are he, are you? I missed your name just now,” said Lewin, putting his hand within his coat. Perrin pushed back his chair so that his body covered Lewin from Stukeley. “Ah,” continued Lewin, in his hard voice with its ring of jocularity, “I’ve a letter for you. I was to deliver it into your hands. You’ve got friends at Court, I think, sir. It came to me through the Secretary.” Margaret kept a steady face, not daring to glance at Stukeley; for a wink to a blind horse may be as disastrous as a blow. His first thought was, “here it ends”; his second thought told him that Perrin was giving the show away, by pushing back his chair; his third thought took in the possibilities of the pistol. He filled his wine-glass composedly, so that he might have a missile handy, then poured a little claret into Olivia’s glass. “Friends at Court, Captain Lewin?” he answered. “No. I don’t think so. Let me see this mysterious letter.” A sudden impulse urged him to keep Olivia’s eyes from her husband’s face. “Howard,” he added, “you never showed Mrs. Stukeley those experiments of yours on the maize-ear. Aren’t those some of the maize-ears just behind you?” “Ah yes, Mrs. Stukeley,” said Howard, reaching behind him to the jar. “Let me explain them to you.” Lewin selected a sealed packet from his pocket-book and handed it across the table. Olivia, reaching out her hand to pass the letter to Margaret, saw the superscription. “Why,” she cried, “it’s from Uncle Nestor. How strange. We were just now talking of him.” “So is this Sir Nestor’s hand?” said Margaret, putting the letter to one side. He asked because the letter in his pocket was addressed in the same hand. “Yes,” said Olivia, looking down at it. “Aren’t you going to read it?” “Read it,” said Stukeley in a strange voice. Howard laid down his maize-cobs. The letter lay at Margaret’s side; everybody looked at it. Mrs. Prinsep, in her shrewd Scotch way, glanced at her neighbours, and saw that there was something wrong. “There is something wrong somewhere,” she said to herself. Olivia, looking at Perrin and at her husband, wondered if the heat had been too much for them. Their faces were so very curious. It struck her that the talk had gone to pieces. The host, waiting for her head to turn, so that he might expound his new science to her, held his peace.