"I don't know, dear. Perhaps it was you he meant. However, you must promise not to tell, if I get the letter." "My dear!--as if I should tell! You know I never say a word!" Marianne felt she had done her duty by this letter as she left the room to get it. For had she not honourably resolved not to show it, and even gone the length of locking it into a drawer to prove her resolution? And didn't her getting up from her tea show what an honourable intent she had been acting under? Oh yes, she had done her duty. Besides, what did it matter? "Here's his letter. I don't expect he'll be home till Thursday.... No, I suppose I mustn't show you the whole. I'll read the bits." "You hadn't had your tea." Mrs. Eldridge felt quite secure of the mouse, as she knew her husband wouldn't come before 6.30, and the train was always behind. She felt so secure that she interjected a remark on another subject--dress. She saw Marianne had on her plaid, and admitted her wisdom; it had gone so much colder. How those stuffs did last out! It really looked as good as new. Then she recommended those little oblong things with jam in the middle, which she had tried and her hostess hadn't; the latter, though, had bought them at the new confectioner's. Marianne put the letter safe out of the way of spills and slops, and finished her tea. During which the mouse may be said to have remained on the floor, watched. Then she picked up the letter, and after glancing through a page not germane to the matter, identified that which was. "Here it is," she said, and went on reading:--"'You will be amused at what I think I have found out about Judith, the handsome eldest one I told you of. She is stage-struck--wants to go on the boards! She has not said it directly to me, but I feel pretty certain that a "friend" she tells me of, who has these aspirations, is no other than _herself_. However, I may be mistaken. This is what I judge from: We were sitting on a sofa'...." The reader paused, looking on into the text. Mrs. Eldridge struck in: "Where was the sofa? Does he say where the sofa was?" "My dear Charlotte!" Marianne expostulated, "_can_ it matter? Besides, he _says_---- However, I'll go straight on if you're going to fancy I'm leaving anything out." And then continued, reading fair: "... 'on a sofa in the drawing-room after dinner. When she had told me about this friend, having asked me first if I knew lots of actors and actresses, I asked what sort of looking girl the friend was. _I saw her look in a glass on the wall before she answered._ And then she said something rather evasive about beauty being a matter of opinion, and that there was probably enough in this case for working purposes. She had disparaged her friend's performance, as it struck me, out of all proportion to her apparent anxiety to advocate her cause, and a sort of confidence that she would succeed. I put this down to protest of personal modesty, as well as the look in the glass.'"