“How did you come by this?”

“I met her at dinner yesterday at the Lindsays’.”

“What!”

Percival repeated his reply.

“And I was asked there, and refused for a vile whitebait dinner at Greenwich,” said Pommery with a dismal groan.

“She is absolutely charming, Jack—so naïve, so frank, so coquettish, and so pure.”

“Are you hit?”

“I would be if my proof-armor had not been buckled on by my friend Pommery. No, Jack, I want to ask you all about these people, and I’ll tell you why: they are my Irish cousins.”

“Not the—”

“Yes, the writer of one of those fatal letters was Mrs. Devereux; of the other, Charley.”