"These foreigners are all the same. Sack the lot. This one meets
your lady twice a week. I know it of my own knowledge--and to see an
Englishman put on goes against the grain. You watch it and see if what I
say isn't true. I shouldn't meddle if it wasn't a dirty foreigner that's
in it.
"Yours obedient."
The sensation with which Soames dropped the letter was similar to
that he would have had entering his bedroom and finding it full of
black-beetles. The meanness of anonymity gave a shuddering obscenity
to the moment. And the worst of it was that this shadow had been at the
back of his mind ever since the Sunday evening when Fleur had pointed
down at Prosper Profond strolling on the lawn, and said: "Prowling cat!"
Had he not in connection therewith, this very day, perused his Will and
Marriage Settlement? And now this anonymous ruffian, with nothing to
gain, apparently, save the venting of his spite against foreigners, had
wrenched it out of the obscurity in which he had hoped and wished it
would remain. To have such knowledge forced on him, at his time of life,
about Fleur's mother I He picked the letter up from the carpet, tore it
across, and then, when it hung together by just the fold at the back,
stopped tearing, and reread it. He was taking at that moment one of the
decisive resolutions of his life. He would not be forced into another
scandal. No! However he decided to deal with this matter--and it
required the most far-sighted and careful consideration he would
do nothing that might injure Fleur. That resolution taken, his mind
answered the helm again, and he made his ablutions. His hands trembled
as he dried them. Scandal he would not have, but something must be
done to stop this sort of thing! He went into his wife's room and stood
looking around him. The idea of searching for anything which would
incriminate, and entitle him to hold a menace over her, did not even
come to him. There would be nothing--she was much too practical. The
idea of having her watched had been dismissed before it came--too well
he remembered his previous experience of that. No! He had nothing
but this torn-up letter from some anonymous ruffian, whose impudent
intrusion into his private life he so violently resented. It was
repugnant to him to make use of it, but he might have to. What a mercy
Fleur was not at home to-night! A tap on the door broke up his painful
cogitations.
"Mr. Michael Mont, sir, is in the drawing-room. Will you see him?"