With this nobleman Lady Cecilia was only very slightly acquainted, she having met him on two or three occasions, some years previously, at her father's house.
"I must apologise, Lady Harborough, for this intrusion," said the earl; "but I trust to your kindness to pardon me in that respect, and to afford me a little information concerning a matter which has suddenly assumed an air of importance in my eyes."
"No apology is necessary for the honour which your lordship confers upon me by visiting my humble abode," answered Lady Cecilia; "and with regard to the subject to which your lordship alludes, I shall be happy to furnish any information in my power."
"Your ladyship's courtesy encourages me to proceed," continued the earl. "Forgive me if I must direct your attention to one of those pieces of gossip—I will not say scandal—which so often become current in the sphere in which we move. I allude to an anecdote relative to a certain mysterious remittance of a thousand pounds which was forwarded to Sir Rupert Harborough, and which your ladyship undertook to disburse for his advantage."
"Your lordship places the matter in as delicate a light as possible," said Lady Cecilia, affecting to laugh heartily in order to conceal the shame which she really experienced at this reference to her unworthy action; "but it was only a pleasant trick which I played Sir Rupert. The truth is, Sir Rupert is not the most generous of men towards his wife; and when I found that some honourable person was repaying him a debt contracted a long time previously, I thought that, as the amount fell so providentially into my hands, I could not do better than appropriate it to the liquidation of the arrears of pin-money due to me."
"Very just, madam," said the earl, forcing himself to smile at the incident which Lady Cecilia represented in the light of a venial little advantage taken by a wife against her husband. "I believe that the amount was forwarded anonymously?"
"To tell you the candid truth, my lord," answered Lady Cecilia, "the whole affair was so strange and romantic, that I kept, as a great curiosity, the letter which accompanied the bank-note. If you possess any interest in the matter——"
"Your ladyship knows that I am not seeking this information without some object," said the earl, emphatically. "Would it be indiscreet," he added, in a less serious tone, "to request a glimpse at that great curiosity?"
"Oh! by no means," returned Lady Cecilia, who affected to treat the whole matter as an excellent joke; then, rising from her seat, she hastened to her work-box, and in a few moments produced the letter. "It was not so scented with musk when I received it," she added, laughing; "but it was redolent of a far more grateful flavour—that of this world's mammon."
"I believe mammon is the deity whom we all more or less adore," observed the Earl of Warrington, gallantly taking up the tone of chit-chat, rather than formality, which Lady Cecilia endeavoured to infuse into the conversation: then, as he received the letter from her hand, he said, "May I be permitted to read it?"