Perchance it was not Sandro, but his supposedly murdered elder brother. That would, of course, account for the resemblance. This idea struck me as being remarkably intelligent, and I at once began to search my mind for its literary beginnings. My dear father used to say that all ideas had literary beginnings and all beginnings contained a literary idea. But neither Deadwood Dick, Edwin Arnold, Walter Pater or The Duchess seemed to have supplied me with the thought, strive as I would to place it among them. I was forced to claim it as original, and perhaps merely the theme for a story's beginning. And despite my dear father's precept, I do verily believe that I am at times productive of ideas quite my own, as, for example, in the realm of love, wherein my manifold ideas must have no other origin than my own brain, inasmuch as the only books on the subject which we possessed at home were written by a Frenchman named Balzac, and though ostensibly in English translation they were mostly set forth in asterisks, dots and dashes. But I digress. Let us return to the privacy of my chamber at the villa, and the note to Wilkes, which somehow must be disposed of. My first inclination was to procure a two-cent stamp and mail it--an obvious solution. And yet I hesitated, because if by chance it should miscarry and fall into the wrong hands, what dreadful consequences might not ensue? What a, as one might say, roughhouse might it not--er--precipitate! No, mailing would not do, because at best I might be unable to find a mail box or post office before late the next day, and I would certainly be unwilling to offer a note so addressed to one of the other household servants. Furthermore, I was hampered by a lack of familiarity with the house. Doubtless there was a servants' mail box somewhere about the service stairs, if only I knew where. But to wander round looking for it would be both nerve-racking and indiscreet, particularly at such an hour. Finally in desperation I was half tempted to burn the wretched thing, and forbore only because of my promise to Alicia. My brain felt as if it were on fire. I did not know what to do. All at once the great room with its wide spaciousness and light hangings seemed suffocatingly hot. I crossed to the window, and first extinguishing the light in order not to attract the night insects, opened it and sat down beside it, the better to meditate upon my course of action. I was half determined to take the whole matter to Pinto Pegg in the morning and allow him to settle our minds for us, even against Alicia's will.