"Your aunt, Mrs. Aylmer, is a little more snappish than usual. I have a hard time, I assure you, with her. My great friend, Maurice Trevor, returns, I think, in a day or two. Ah, Florence, you little know what a great, great friend he is!
"Yours affectionately,
"Bertha Keys."
CHAPTER XVI.
ON THE BRINK OF AN ABYSS.
Florence sat for a long time with the manuscript of Bertha's story on her lap. Having read the letter once, she did not trouble herself to read it again. It was the sort of letter Bertha always wrote—the letter which meant temptation, the letter which seemed to drag its victim to the edge of an abyss.
Florence said to herself: "Shall I read the manuscript or shall I not? Shall I put it into the fire or shall I waste a couple of pence in returning it to Bertha, or shall I—"
She did not finish even in her own mind the last suggestion which formed itself in her brain. She had not read the title of the manuscript, but her thoughts kept wandering round and round it to the exclusion of everything else. Presently she took it in her hand, and felt its weight, and then she turned the pages one by one, and glanced at them for a moment, and saw that they were all written out very neatly, in a sort of copper-plate writing which was not the least like Bertha's. Bertha had a bold, dashing sort of hand, but this hand might be the work of anyone—the ordinary clerk used such a handwriting. The words were very easily read. Florence caught herself imbibing the meaning of a whole sentence; then, with a sudden, quick movement, she dashed the manuscript away from her to the other side of the room, and walked over and stood by the open window looking across London. She had a headache, brought on through intense excitement, and the view, for the greater part concealed by the interminable London houses, scarcely appealed to her.