This caused a laugh. It subsided. The historian resumed.
“Next day she cooled, and wrote a letter.”
“To you?”
“No, to my groom. Would you like to see it? It is a curiosity.”
He sent one of the club waiters for his servant, and his servant for his desk, and produced the letter.
“There!” said Vandeleur. “She looks like a queen, and steps like an empress, and this is how she writes:
“'DEAR JORGE—i have got the sak, an' praps your turn nex. dear jorge he alwaies promise me the grey oss, which now an oss is life an death to me. If you was to ast him to lend me the grey he wouldn't refuse you,
“'Yours respecfully,
“'RHODA SOMERSET.'”
When the letter and the handwriting, which, unfortunately, I cannot reproduce, had been duly studied and approved, Vandeleur continued—