“Whatever importance it may be to you to get this letter, Mistress Forest,” cried she, addressing poor Mary, who was looking very disconsolate, and not a little angry also, “it is of much greater moment to me that I should keep it. It is as much as my place is worth to give a letter back which has once been given into my charge; and I am not aware that I owe that place to my Lady Lisgard, and therefore feel called upon to risk----I beg pardon, your Ladyship--but I did not catch sight of you before. What your servant has come to ask of me is something out of the question. I will post this second letter for her--although it is two minutes past the time, even with an extra stamp, for _that_--but as for returning her this other: yes, I have no doubt it's hers--although, for that matter, people's handwriting is often very like other people's--but directly it reached this box it became the property of the Postmaster-general. It is no more hers now than it is mine; and if I was to yield it up, it's a matter, madam, that might be brought before the assizes.” “Mrs Rudd,” said my Lady quietly, “I hope, although your late husband and my son were not quite of the same way of thinking as to politics, that you do not look upon me in an unneighbourly light. I do not wish to insult you by offering you a bribe; but I may say this much, that nobody ever put me under an obligation yet, without my endeavouring to recompense them to the best of my power.” “Yes, my Lady--although I can't say as _I_ have ever been overburdened with favours at your Ladyship's hands--I know what sugar and currants goes to the Abbey from Simmons' every week--enough for a regiment, I'm sure, and at such a price, too, and all because he voted blue”---- “Voting blue, Mrs Rudd,” interrupted my Lady, “is nothing at all compared with the good service you would do me, if you could only oblige my maid in the matter of this letter. Her future happiness, I may say, is bound up in the mère fact of that little note arriving or not at its destination.” “_Mr R. Derrick, Turf Hotel, Piccadilly_,” muttered Mrs Rudd, looking at the address over the top of her silver spectacles. “I should like to have half the Abbey grocery custom very much, of course.” “You shall have it,” whispered my Lady in broken tones. “But I dare not do it,” continued the post-mistress. “This might be held over me--if it ever came to be known--so that I should never be my own mistress again, which, now that Rudd is gone, I mean to be. When you have once done an illegal action, my Lady, you may just as well be a slave--until you have taken your punishment. Somebody is sure to get wind of it, and to put you under their thumb.” My Lady gave a ghastly smile, for speech was not in her.