One morning among her correspondence she found a registered letter which mystified and disconcerted her exceedingly. Unsigned, and with no address, it ran as follows:
“The writer possesses nine letters written by you to the late Sir Stephen Lethbridge, and five written by Sir Stephen to you, after your marriage to the late Henry Hartsilver. The former are dated respectively ——” here followed the dates, also the addresses from which the letters had been written. “The latter are dated ——” and then came another list.
“These documents,” the letter continued, “are wholly compromising, and photographic prints of them all will be posted in registered envelopes to the whole of your circle of personal friends and acquaintances unless six thousand pounds is paid to me on or before the first of October next. This is no vain threat, and if the contents of these documents have faded from your memory the writer can send you photographic prints to confirm the accuracy of the statements contained in this letter.
“Reply at once by advertisement in the personal column of The Morning Post, and sign it ‘A. B.—from Y. Z.’”
Cora stared at the letter for a minute, then read it through again. Written on a typewriter, it had been posted, according to the postmark, in the London West Central district. The letters to which it referred she remembered only too well. They were all the letters she had written to Sir Stephen and that he had written to her during the time she had been married and while her husband was alive.
She was alone in her room, and she sat down on the bed and began to think. Who in the world could have obtained possession of those letters, especially those she had received? Some servant? Mentally she reviewed the various servants who had been in her employment during the past years, but none seemed the sort likely to steal letters or attempt to levy blackmail.
Then, all at once, she remembered Yootha’s telling her long ago, one day when they had been talking in confidence about poor Stephen Lethbridge’s sad end, that her father had told her that strange-looking men and women had been in the habit of visiting Sir Stephen at Abbey Hall, in his place in Cumberland, shortly before his death. She wondered now, as she had wondered then, who those people could have been, and why they had visited Sir Stephen.
But that, after all, she now reflected, was not of moment. What did matter was that her letters should be in the keeping of someone determined to do her an injury which would affect the whole of her future life if she refused to buy them back at the sum named in the letter she held in her hand.
For a quarter of an hour or more she sat there, pondering deeply. She had received in the course of her life several hard knocks, and not once had her spirit failed her. It came back to her now that Stephen had more than once warned her to be more careful about what she put in writing; but then, she reflected, had he not himself been almost as reckless every time he wrote to her? Both were emotional by nature; both were highly imaginative, and they became carried away by their feelings when in correspondence with each other.