"Catharine has had an abominable letter, Hugh!—the most scandalous thing!"
Flaxman took it from Catharine's hand, looked it through, and turned it over. The same script, a little differently disguised, and practically the same letter, as that which had been shown him in the library! But it began with a reference to the part which Mrs. Elsmere and her daughter had played in the terrible accident of the preceding week, which showed that the rogue responsible for it was at least a rogue possessed of some local and personal information.
Flaxman laid it down, and looked at his sister-in-law.
"Well?"
Catharine met his eyes with the clear intensity of her own.
"Isn't it hard to understand how anybody can do such a thing as that?" she said, with her patient sigh—the sigh of an angel grieving over the perversity of men.
Flaxman dropped on the sofa beside her.
"You feel with me, that it is a mere clumsy attempt to injure Meynell, in the interests of the campaign against him?" he asked her, eagerly.
"I don't know about that," said Catharine slowly—a shining sadness in her look. "But I do know that it could only injure those who are trying to fight his errors—if it could be supposed that they had stooped to such weapons!"
"You dear woman!" cried Flaxman, impulsively, and he raised her hand to his lips. Catharine and Rose looked their astonishment. Whereupon he gave them the history of the hour he had just passed through.