“Voting blue, Mrs Rudd,” interrupted my Lady, “is nothing at all compared with the good service you would do me, if you could only oblige my maid in the matter of this letter. Her future happiness, I may say, is bound up in the mère fact of that little note arriving or not at its destination.”
“Mr R. Derrick, Turf Hotel, Piccadilly,” muttered Mrs Rudd, looking at the address over the top of her silver spectacles. “I should like to have half the Abbey grocery custom very much, of course.”
“You shall have it,” whispered my Lady in broken tones.
“But I dare not do it,” continued the post-mistress. “This might be held over me—if it ever came to be known—so that I should never be my own mistress again, which, now that Rudd is gone, I mean to be. When you have once done an illegal action, my Lady, you may just as well be a slave—until you have taken your punishment. Somebody is sure to get wind of it, and to put you under their thumb.”
My Lady gave a ghastly smile, for speech was not in her.
“Look here, Mrs Rudd,” interposed Mistress Forest softly, “you are not asked either to destroy or to give up this letter—of the inside of which, if you please, I will tell you every word. It is written to my lover—that's the fact; and I am very, very anxious that he should receive it”—here she trod upon my Lady's foot with unmistakable emphasis—“should receive it by this night's post.”
“Well, so he will,” returned the postmistress, “in Piccadilly.”
“Yes, but Mr Derrick is not in Piccadilly,” urged the waiting-maid. “The direction should he 'Care of Mr Arthur Haldane'—what court is it, my Lady?—Yes; Pump Court, Temple. If you would only let me write that, Mrs Rudd, upon the envelope, instead of the present address, all mischief will be avoided. Would it not, my Lady?”
“There seems no great harm in that,” said Mrs Rudd reflectively.
“No harm whatever, and a great deal of good to you,” murmured the waiting-maid, as with a rapid hand she crossed out the words already written, and substituted for them the address of Mr Haldane's law-chambers. “Thank you kindly. Now, please to stamp this other. I am so much obliged.”