Otto sat with his back to the ominous packet. It did not escape Goswyn that he became very monosyllabic and did not show much interest in his brother's conversation.
"If she would only return!" Goswyn thought to himself. He was convinced that the packet contained Dorothea's letters to Orbanoff. He had not been mistaken the previous evening: it had been Dorothea who had passed him, evidently returning to her home from a last interview. The affair, odious as it was, was at an end: Dorothea was relieved that it was so. She was not fitted to engage in a dangerous intrigue.
Suddenly Otto began to sniff, as if perceiving some odour in the air. "'Tis odd," he said. "Don't you perceive a peculiar fragrance? If it were not too silly, I should say that it smells like Dorothea."
"That would not be odd," his brother rejoined, "since she left the room only half an hour ago."
"But I did not perceive it before," Otto said; and then, with sudden irritability, turning towards the writing-table, he added, "It is that confounded packet!"
"It probably contains something of Dorothea's which she has accidentally left at a friend's."
But Otto had taken the packet from the table. He turned it over. "I know the seal,--a die with the motto va banque: it is Orbanoff's seal!" His breath came quick. "What can Orbanoff have sent her?"
"Probably some political treatise. I do not see how it can interest you," said Goswyn.
Once more Otto turned the packet over in his hands. He seemed about to lay it down on the writing-table again; then, at the last moment, before Goswyn could bethink himself, he opened it hastily. About a dozen short notes, in Dorothea's childish handwriting, fell out, then a note of Orbanoff's. Otto's eyes were riveted upon it with a glassy stare; he could not yet comprehend. Then with a sudden cry he crushed the note together, tossed it to Goswyn, and buried his face in his hands.
A dull, brooding silence followed. Goswyn held the note in his hand, without reading it: it was not for him to pry curiously into his brother's anguish and disgrace.