“DEAR BERYL,--Please consider this letter absolutely private and personal. I rely on your never speaking of it to anyone, and I ask you to burn it directly you have read it. Although I hate more than anything else interfering in the private affairs of another, I feel that it is my absolute duty to send this to you. I am a very much older woman than you--indeed, almost an old woman. I know the world very well--too well--and I feel I can ask you to trust me when I give you a piece of advice, however unpleasant it may seem at the moment. You were dining to-night alone with a man who is totally unfit to be your companion, or the companion of any decent woman. I cannot explain to you how I know this, nor can I tell you why he is unfit to be in any reputable company. But I solemnly assure you--I give you my word--that I am telling you the truth. That man is a blackguard in the full acceptation of the word. I believe you met him by chance in a studio. I am quite positive that you know nothing whatever about him. I do. I know--” She hesitated, leaning over the paper with the pen lifted, frowning painfully and with a look of fear in her eyes. Then her face hardened in an expression of white resolution, and she wrote: “I know that he ought to be in prison. He is beyond the pale. You must never be seen with him again. I have said nothing of this to anyone. Mr. Craven has not a suspicion of it. Nor has anyone else whom we know. Drop that man at once. I don’t think he will ask you for your reason. His not doing so will help to prove to you that I am telling you the truth.--Yours sincerely, “ADELA SELLINGWORTH.” When she had finished this letter Lady Sellingworth read it over carefully twice, then put it into an envelope and wrote on the envelope Beryl’s address, and in the corner “strictly private.” But having done this she did not fasten the envelope, though she lit a red candle that was on the table and took up a stick of sealing-wax. Again hesitation seized her. The written word remains. Might it not be very dangerous to send this letter? Suppose Beryl did show it to that man who called himself Nicolas Arabian? He might--it was improbable, but he might--bring an action for libel against the writer. Lady Sellingworth sickened as she thought of that, and rapidly she imagined a hideous scandal, all London talking of her, the Law Courts, herself in the witness-box, cross-examination. What evidence could she give to prove that the accusation she had written was true?