But to get to the cover to which you particularly directed my attention. It was designed, I take it, primarily as a decoration, and not as a series of representations of the characters to appear in the book. Consequently, there is but little definite character-drawing in any of the groups with the exception of the one at the bottom of the page, where Jasper is depicted exactly as I should wish him depicted, dark and saturnine ‘with thick, lustrous black hair and whiskers.’ If the other figure is merely a wraith conjured up by Jasper’s evil opium-soaked conscience, it is as substantial as one of the ghosts of Hamlet’s father given to us on the stage time after time without protest. But in a black and white design for a popular serial it is scarcely possible to be subtle, and at the same time plainly intelligible. So it may be a ghost, or it may be Edwin in the flesh, or Neville Landless got up to represent Edwin. It is a very effective little cut. In the other groups, Jasper is not so unmistakable, but, of course, in the upper drawings the sleek, clerical-looking personage with his hand at his mouth is meant to represent Jasper. The staircase groups, I can’t identify. The young men in both may be meant to represent Jasper. They are not in the least like that sombre personage, but just colourless young men. In the garden scene one cannot think that the kneeling figure pressing the girl’s fingers to his lips is meant for Jasper at all. It has a mop of fair hair and boasts a moustache, and in the scene in the garden of the Nuns’ House Rosa did not permit Jasper to approach her so nearly. In the picture there is no suggestion of the repugnance and fear with which she regarded Jasper. Don’t you think it reasonable to suggest that this little picture illustrates a scene to take place much later in the book, a scene Dickens did not live to write? It might be Edwin Drood returned from abroad or from disguise. Edwin Drood making love to Helena Landless. In chapter viii. he was ‘already enough impressed by Helena to feel indignant that Helena’s brother should dispose of him (Edwin) so coolly’ to Rosebud. Or could it be Tartar proposing to Rosebud? But Tartar had no moustache either as himself or as Datchery, and the girl’s figure has a suggestion of lithe dignity which I don’t associate with the ‘little beauty’ Rosebud.