Rhoda sat down and crossed her feet and looked into dusty vacancy. The recollection of Ancram’s expression as he passed her in the road came back to her, and as she reflected that the ship which carried him to Judith Church would also take her the balm respectfully prepared by the Committee, her sense of humour curved her lips in an ironical smile. The grotesqueness of the thing made it seem less serious, and she found quite five minutes’ interested occupation in considering it. Then she regarded the baboo making pens, and picked up a “Digest” and put it down again, and turned over the leaves of a tome on the “Hindu Law of Inheritance,” and yawned, and looked out of the window, and observed that it had stopped raining. “Philip, aren’t you nearly done? Remember me affectionately to Mrs. Church—no, perhaps you’d better not, either.” Doyle was knitting his brows over a final sentiment, and did not reply. “Philip, is that one of your old coats hanging on the nail? Is it old enough to give away? I want an old coat for the syce to sleep in: he had fever yesterday.” Mrs. Doyle went over to the object of her inquiries, took it down, and daintily shook it. “_Philip!_ Pay some attention to me. May I have this coat? There’s nothing in the pockets—nothing but an old letter and a newspaper. Oh!” Her husband looked up at last, noting a change in the tone of her exclamation. She stood looking in an embarrassed way at the address on the envelope she held. It was in Ancram’s handwriting. “What letter?” he asked. She handed it to him, and at the sight of it he frowned a little. “Is the newspaper the _Bengal Free Press_?” “Yes,” she said, glancing at it. “And it’s marked in one or two places with red pencil.” “Then read them both,” Doyle replied. “They don’t tell a very pretty story, but it may amuse you. I thought I had destroyed them long ago. I can’t have worn that coat since I left Florence.” Rhoda sat down, with a beating curiosity, and applied herself to understand the story that was not very pretty. It sometimes annoyed her that she could not resist her interest in things that concerned Ancram, especially things that exemplified him. She brought her acutest intelligence to bear upon the exposition of the letter and the newspaper; but it was very plain and simple, especially where it was underscored in red pencil, and she comprehended it at once. She sat thinking of it, with bright eyes, fitting it into relation with what she had known and guessed before, perhaps unconsciously pluming herself a little upon her penetration, and, it must be confessed, feeling a keen thrill of unregretting amusement at Ancram’s conviction. Then suddenly, with a kind of mental gasp, she remembered Judith Church. “Ah!” she said to herself, and her lips almost moved. “What a complication!” And then darted up from some depth of her moral consciousness the thought, “She ought to know, and I ought to tell her.”