'If he is really alarmed he may have changed his name, and gone to some part of the country where he is altogether unknown, or he may have crossed the Channel to some of the French or Belgian ports. There is a lot of betting carried on from that side, and he may manage to live there as he has lived here--by fleecing fools.' Two days later, Hampton met the Hawtreys at a dinner-party. Dorothy was looking pale and languid, but at times she roused herself and talked with almost feverish gaiety. Lord Halliburn was there; he was sitting next to Dorothy, and seemed silent and preoccupied, and looked, Hampton thought, vexed when she had one of her fits of talking. When they had rejoined the ladies after dinner Hampton was chatting with the lady he had taken down, and who was an old friend of his family. 'Is it not awfully sad, this affair of Miss Hawtrey's?' she said. 'It is evidently preying on her health. I never saw anybody more changed in the course of a few weeks. Of course, everyone who knows her is quite certain that there is no foundation whatever for these wicked libels about her. Still, naturally, people who don't know her think that there must be something in it, and she must know, wherever she goes, that people are talking about it. It is terrible! I do not know what I should do were she a daughter of mine.' 'Yes, it is a most painful position; there does not seem any method by which these anonymous libels can be met and answered. The most scandalous part of the business is that any notice of a thing of this sort should get into the papers. The form in which it was noticed rendered it impossible to obtain redress of any kind; the statements contained as to the annoyance caused by these letters, and as to the nature of their contents, were accurate, and Mr. Hawtrey is therefore unable to take any steps against them. I have known Miss Hawtrey from the time that she was a little child; as you are aware they are my greatest friends, and I assure you that one's powerlessness in these days to take any step to right a wrong of this sort, makes me wish I had lived at any time save in the middle of the nineteenth century. A hundred years ago one would have called out the editor or proprietor, or whatever he calls himself, of a paper that published this thing, and shot him like a dog; four hundred years ago one would have sent him a formal challenge to do battle in the lists; if one had lived in Italy a couple of centuries back, and had adopted the customs of the country, one would have had him removed by a stab in the back by a bravo--not a manner that commends itself to me I own, but which, as against a man whose journal exists by attacking reputations is, I should consider, perfectly legitimate.' 'But he is not the chief offender in the case, Captain Hampton.'