I am quite sure that I need not point out to your lordship that I write you this letter entirely without prejudice and in the interests of the Mandeleys name and estates.
There could be no possibility of the drafts executed by your lordship being met, unless the shares themselves provided the funds, which, under the existing conditions, appears impossible.
Respectfully yours,
STEPHEN WADHAM.
The Marquis looked out upon the lawn. There was in his memory, too, a recent and serious conversation with Mr. Merridrew, concerning the accumulating charges for dilapidations upon the property. He watched David playing croquet with Sylvia Laycey with a deepening frown upon his face, glanced from them to where Letitia sat, apparently absorbed in a book which she was reading, and from her he looked through a side window towards that hated little demesne across the moat, where Richard Vont, in his shabby brown velveteen suit, with his white hair and his motionless figure, seemed to dominate the otherwise peaceful prospect. Somehow or other, both outlooks irritated him almost as much as his own mental condition. The hard pressure of circumstances was asserting itself in his mind. He found himself struggling against an insidious longing to see Letitia in Sylvia's place. In his way he was superstitious. He even began to wonder whether that silent, ceaseless hate, that daily litany of curses, could really in any way be responsible for the increasing embarrassments by which he was surrounded, that great, dumb anxiety which kept him with wide-open eyes at night and sent him about in the daytime with a constant, wearing pain at his heart.
He turned at last wearily away from the window, rose to his feet, opened the French doors which led out into the gardens, and strolled across the lawn to where Letitia was seated. She laid down her book and welcomed him with a smile which had in it just a shade of fatigue.
"Our friend Thain," he observed, "seems to be a success with Miss Sylvia."
Letitia turned her head and watched them.
"Sylvia has already confided to me her ardent admiration."
The Marquis sighed as he sank into a chair. Letitia glanced at him a little anxiously.
"Anything wrong, dad?"