“Look here,” she said, “do you know that those two old villains in Oaktown are spreading it about that you and I are having a love-affair? Haven’t you got a prescription for that sort of thing in your church business? Can’t you curse them with bell, book, and candle, or something? I’ll supply the bell, if you’ll supply the rest of the paraphernalia.”
Dorward shook his head. “Can’t be done. Cursing is the prerogative of bishops. Not on the best terms with my bishop, I’m afraid. Last time he sent for me I had to spend the night and I left a rosary under my pillow. He was much pained, my spies at the Palace tell me.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I don’t mind,” she said. “All right. So long.”
Three days later, an anonymous post-card was sent to Sylvia, a vulgar Temptation of St. Anthony; and a week afterward Philip suddenly flung a letter down before her which he told her to read. It was an ill-spelled ungrammatical screed, which purported to warn Philip of his wife’s behavior, enumerated the hours she had spent alone with Dorward either in his cottage or in the church, and wound up with the old proverb of there being none so blind as those who won’t see. Sylvia blushed while she read it, not for what it said about herself, but for the vile impulse that launched this smudged and scrabbled impurity.
“That’s a jolly thing to get at breakfast,” Philip said.
“Beastly,” she agreed. “And your showing it to me puts you on a level with the sender.”
“I thought it would be a good lesson for you,” he said.
“A lesson?” she repeated.
“Yes, a lesson that one can’t behave exactly as one likes, particularly in the country among a lot of uneducated peasants.”
“But I don’t understand,” Sylvia went on. “Did you show me this filthy piece of paper with the idea of asking me to change my manner of life?”