"I can revise my List of Friends, so to speak—drop those I don't care for and enter such new ones as I wish?"
"Exactly."
"Well, that much of the new order will be quite to my liking," said I, and turned to my mail.
The letters lay face downward, of course, and I opened them in their order without bothering to examine the superscription. Presently, I came upon one sealed with a blurred dab of green wax. Rather curious, I turned it over; it was unstamped and was marked: "Personal and Important." I did not know the hand-writing; but, then, Lady Helen Radnor's was the only one in all Dornlitz I could have known.
"Here," said I to Courtney, "is a letter marked 'Personal and Important'; what is it; an invitation to contribute to the professionally destitute?"
"More likely an invitation to some gambling den."
I tossed it over. "Take a look at it and guess again," I said.
He glanced languidly at the envelope; then picked it up quickly and scrutinized it sharply.
"We both are wrong," he said, and he motioned for the servant to return it to me.
I knew he had recognized the writing and that it called for more respect than a careless fling across the table. I broke the seal and drew out the letter. It bore the Royal Arms over the word "Dornlitz." Beneath, it read: