Giles meanwhile, having pushed the writing materials on one side, had risen and helped himself freely again to the Comet port, drinking courage to his own half-repented resolution, a babble of disjointed phrases escaping from him in the intervals of his gulps. “No, he could not go against Sir David—poor old man, not many years to live—served his father’s father. Eh, and Sir Edmund had put him into these arms; and he but a babe—the greatest toper in the house, says Sir Edmund...” Here there was a chuckle and a tear, and a fresh glass poured out. Margery never blinked towards the bottle. Unfolding her hands, she presently began to smooth out the writing paper, and by-and-bye began to speak. At first it was a merely soothing trickle of talk. No one knew Mr. Giles’ high-mindedness and nobility of character better than she did; though, indeed, she herself was but a new-comer at Bindon, compared to him—the third of his generation in the service of the house, and himself the servant of three Cheveral masters. By-and-bye, from this primrose path of flattery she turned aside into less smooth ground. Something she said of the real duties of old service, of the mistaken duty of blind submission. There was a dark hint of Sir David’s helplessness, a prey to designing intruders—“and him as easy to cheat as a child!” A tear here welled to Mistress Margery’s eyelid; there was no doubt she spoke as one whose knowledge was first hand. Mister Giles knew best, of course; but, in her humble opinion, it was an old servitor’s bounden duty to let their master’s nearest relative know. Here Margery became very dark again; things are so much more terrible when merely hinted at. The butler’s hand halted with the sixth glass on the way to his lips; he put it down again untasted. “Who’s to look after Master, I should like to know?” asked Margery boldly, “when you and I and all the old faithful folk is turned out of Bindon, and that deep young lady and Master Rickart reign alone, with their poisons and their powders?” “By gum!” cried Giles, with a shout, thumping the table, so that the precious wine this time slopped over its barrier. “By gum! hand me that paper, and say your say, ma’am, and I’ll write it!” The man was just tipsy enough already to be easily worked up, and unable to analyse the means by which his passion was roused; not too tipsy to be a perfectly capable instrument in the housekeeper’s hands. The following was the letter that Giles, the butler of Bindon, wrote to “the Lady Lochore,” at her house in London: