“Yes, dear—”
“Can I speak to you alone?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, I have done such an awful thing. Do help me. You have so much nerve and tact.”
“My dear child, steady yourself.”
“I looked out Jennings’s papers; Miss Cozens was chattering to me, and when you called me, she offered to pin the things on the board. How on earth it happened, I cannot imagine, but a private letter of mine had got mixed up with the bazaar correspondence. It must have been lying by Jennings’s list, for Miss Cozens, without troubling to read it, pinned it on the board.”
The perturbed, sensitive creature was breathless and all a-flutter. Lady Sophia patted her arm.
“Well, dear, I see no great harm yet—”
“Wait! It was a letter from an old friend abroad, a letter that contained certain confessions about a Roxton family. What on earth am I to do? Look, here it is, read it.”
Lady Sophia read the letter, holding it at arm’s-length like the music of a song.