'Some old envelope!' The worst of Caffyn's fear vanished when he heard that. She did not know that it contained an unread letter then; she did not guess--how could she, when Dolly herself did not know it--where the letter had come from. He might appease her yet! Caffyn's first inference, it may be said, was correct; in Dolly's mind her guilt had consisted in stealing a marked stamp, and her hurried and confused confession had, quite innocently and unconsciously, left Mabel ignorant of the real extent and importance of what seemed to her a quite imaginary offence. 'Deny it!' he said, 'of course not; I remember joking her a little over something of the sort. Is _that_ all this tremendous indignation is about--a joke?' 'A joke!' she said indignantly; 'you will not make anyone but yourself merry over jokes like that. You set to work deliberately to frighten her; you did it so thoroughly that she has been wretched for days and days, ill and miserable with the dread of being sent to prison. You _did_ threaten her with a prison, Harold; you told her she must even be afraid of her own father--of all of us.... Who can tell what she has been suffering, all alone, my poor little Dolly! And you dare to call that a joke!' 'I never thought she would take it all so literally,' he said. 'Oh, you are not stupid, Harold; only a cruel fool could have thought he was doing no harm. And you have seen her since again and again; you must have noticed how changed she was, and yet you had no pity on her! Can't you really see what a thing you have been doing? Do you often amuse yourself in that way, and with children?' 'Hang it, Mabel,' said Caffyn uneasily, 'you're very hard on me!' 'Why were you hard on my darling Dolly?' Mabel demanded. 'What had she done to you--how could you find pleasure in torturing her? Do you hate children--or only Dolly?' He made a little gesture of impatient helplessness. 'Oh, if you mean to go on asking questions like that--' he said, 'of course I don't hate your poor little sister. I tell you I'm sorry she took it seriously--very sorry. And--and, if there's anything I can do to make it up to her somehow; any--any amends, you know----' The hardship, as he felt at the time, of his peculiar position was that it obliged him to offer such a lame excuse for his treatment of Dolly. Without the motive he had had for his conduct, it must seem dictated by some morbid impulse of cruelty--whereas, of course, he had acted quite dispassionately, under the pressure of a necessity--which, however, it was impossible to explain to Mabel.