Olive took the letter to her room, locked the door, and then, after deliberating for a few moments, she quietly tore open the envelope and read what was inside. "If it be requisite to deliver the letter, I can put it into another envelope, and no one will be any the wiser," she said to herself. "If I decide not to deliver it, then another envelope will not be needed."
"A thoroughly business-like document," she said to herself, as she folded up the letter, "and such as any lawyer might write to any lady. If there is no resentment in it, neither is there any love. The resentment is dead without a doubt, but is the love dead also? Query. Well, I will take the letter with me: there will be no harm in doing that: but it by no means follows that Miss Lloyd will ever read it. How easy it will be to pretend that I have lost it, and then I can tell the story my own way--with a sting in it, and before witnesses too, if such a thing be anyhow possible. Oh! to see her humiliation! that will pay for everything."
She was up betimes next morning, and ready to start for Stammars soon after ten o'clock. In answer to her anxious inquiries, her cousin declared that he was much as usual--neither better nor worse. "You will try your best to soften the blow, won't you, Olive?" were Matthew's last words to her.
"You know that I will do my best," she said, with one of her faint smiles. She laid her thin fingers in his hand for a moment, and then she went.
By-and-by came Dr. Whitaker. Pod succeeded in smuggling him upstairs unseen by anyone, and then took up a position in the corridor outside to keep away any would-be intruders. Mrs. Kelvin, especially, was to be kept out of the room. Were she to find out that her son was closeted with Dr. Whitaker, she would imagine at once that there was a conspiracy afoot to dispense with the services of her favourite. Dr. Druce. Fortunately, she was busy downstairs just about that time, and did not go near. Matthew had said that he fancied a certain sort of pudding--an elaborate pudding, which Mrs. Kelvin was positive that no one but herself could make properly--a pudding, as her son was quite aware, that would require her undivided attention for at least a couple of hours below stairs.
Mr. Pod Piper, keeping watch and ward outside his master's door, had a long corridor all to himself, up and down which he could march as though he were a sentry on duty. After a time, from a door at the extreme end, there issued a pert-looking damsel, who smiled sweetly on Pod. In one hand she carried a broom, in the other a dust-pan.
"Ah, Molly, and how are you this morning?" said Pod, with the air of a duke addressing a dependent. "Blooming as ever, I see."
"I'm quite well, Mr. Piper, and I hope you are the same," answered Molly, with a little blush. Then she added, with a confidential air, "I've got such a beautiful rose downstairs. You shall have it for your button-hole, if you'll promise to wear it."
"I'll wear it for your sake, Molly. But whose room is that that you have just come out of?"
"Oh, that's Miss Deane's room. I've just been tidying it up a bit while she's out of the way."