'Well, that is a relief,' Mr. Hawtrey said, more cheerfully than he had before spoken. 'It was a pain to me to think even for a moment that you could have been so foolish. It never entered my head to think that you could have done anything absolutely wrong. However, we must now look at this rascally letter from another point of view. Here is a man writing to demand a sum of money for letters. Now, it is one of two things. Either he has forged letters in his possession, for which he hopes to extort money, or he has no letters of any kind, and his only intention in writing in this manner on an envelope is in some way to cause you pain and annoyance. We may assume that the initials are fictitious; whoever wrote the letter would certainly avoid giving any clue to his identity. Sit down, Dorothy. We must talk the matter over quietly and see what had best be done.' 'But this is dreadful, father!' Dorothy said, as she seated herself in an arm-chair. 'Not dreadful, dear, though I admit that it is unpleasant, very unpleasant; and we must, if possible, trace it to the bottom, for now that this annoyance has begun there is no saying how much farther it may be pushed. Is there anyone you can think of who would be likely to have a spite against you? I do not say any of the four or five gentlemen whose proposals you have declined in the course of the past year; all were gentlemen and beyond suspicion. Any woman servant you may have dismissed; any man whose request for money for one purpose or another you may have refused; anyone, in short, to whom you may have given offence?' 'Not that I know of, father. You know my last maid left to get married, and I had nothing to do with hiring or discharging the other servants; they are all under the housekeeper. I really do not know of anyone who has cause for ill-feeling against me.' 'I shall write at once to the Postmaster General and request him to give orders that no more letters of the kind shall be openly delivered. Peters can hardly have helped reading it; it has evidently been written in a large, bold handwriting, so that it can be read at a glance. Of course, I shall speak to him, but he will probably have chatted about it downstairs already. I shall go down to Scotland Yard and inform them of the annoyance, and ask their advice there, though I don't see that they can do anything until we can furnish them with some sort of clue. We may find one later on; this envelope certainly gives us nothing to go on, but we may be sure others will follow.' 'It is dreadful, father,' Dorothy repeated, as she rose, 'to think that such malicious letters as this can be sent, and that they may be talked about among the servants.'