“Of course, you heard of that wretched woman’s kicking over the traces altogether at last. God knows what will become of her. I believe she had been carrying on rather badly for some time before Tom found out anything. You know what an ass he is. However, he got hold of a letter one evening—met the postman at the door and took her letters along with his own, and didn’t like the look of one and opened it; and then there was an infernal row, and she just put on her bonnet and shawl, walked out of the house and called a cab and drove off. He followed in another cab, but it was a foggy night, and he lost her before she’d gone far. They were in lodgings in Essex Street, and it isn’t easy for one cab to chase another on a foggy evening. She never went back to him, and he went all over London denouncing her, naming first one man and then another, but without any definite idea as to who the real man was. The letter was only a couple of sentences in Italian, which Tom only knew by sight—but he could see it was an appointment at a theatre, for the theatre and hour were named. She snatched the letter out of his hand while they were quarrelling, he told me, and chucked it into the fire, so he hasn’t even the man’s handwriting as evidence against him. It was a hand he had never seen before, he says. However, if he wants to find her no doubt he can do so, if he takes the trouble. I am sorry she should disgrace her family, and of course my wife feels the scandal uncommonly hard upon _her_. I can’t say that I feel any pity for Tom Darcy. She had led a wretched life with him ever since he sold out, and I don’t much wonder at her being deuced glad to leave him. As it’s Tom’s business to shoot her lover, and not mine, I shan’t mix myself up in the affair—and as for her, well, she has made her bed——!” There was more in the letter, but the rest was of no interest to Theodore. The letter was dated January 3rd, 1851. Three of the remaining letters were from Corsica, and contained nothing of any significance. A fourth was written at Monte Carlo, in answer to an appeal for money, and the date was twelve years later than the first. It was a gloomy letter, the letter of a ruined man, who had drunk the cup of disappointment to the dregs.