"Well," he murmured. "That's all right. Didn't I always tell you it would take some time? ... That's all right."
He gazed at the paper, waving it in his hand as he held it by one corner. He perceived that it was the letter of a jealous woman, who had got what she wanted and meant to hold it, and entirely to herself; and his mood became somewhat sardonic.
"Very curt, isn't it?" said Hilda strangely. "And after all this time, too!"
He looked up at her, turning his head sideways to catch her eyes.
"That letter," he said in a voice as strange as Hilda's, "that letter is exactly what it ought to be. It could not possibly have been better turned.... You don't want to keep it, I suppose, do you?"
"No," she muttered.
He tore it into very small pieces, and dropped them into the waste-paper-basket beneath the desk.
"And burn all the others," he said, in a low tone.
"Edwin," after a pause.
"Yes?"