’I stayed up late with him, and did not leave him until he had promised to go to bed.  Giles was still in the study when I went to my room, but he came up shortly afterwards, for I could hear his footsteps distinctly passing my door.  He must have passed Leah in the passage, for I heard him say, “You are up late to-night, Leah,” but her answer escaped me.

’I can tell you no more on my own evidence; but Eric’s account, which I believe as surely as I am holding your hand now, is this: 

’He heard Giles come up to bed, and a sudden impulse prompted him to go down to the study and place his letter on Giles’s desk.  It was a very wild, foolish letter, written under strong excitement.  I saw it afterwards, and felt that it had better not have been written.  Among other things, he informed Giles that he would sooner destroy himself than go into Armstrong’s office, and that he (Giles) had made his life so bitter to him that he thought he might as well do it:  oh, Ursula, of course it was wrong of him, but indeed he had had terrible provocation.  He had made up his mind to put this letter on Giles’s desk before he slept:  so he slipped off his boots, that I might not hear him pass my door, and crept down to the study.  He had his chamber candlestick, as he feared that he might have some difficulty with the fastenings, for he had heard Giles put up the chain and bell.  All our doors on that floor have chains and bells; it is one of Giles’s fads.  To his great surprise, the door was ajar, and when he put down the candle on the table he had a passing fancy that the thick curtains that were drawn over one of the windows moved slightly, as though from a draught of air.  He blamed himself afterwards that he had not gone up to the window and examined it, but in his perturbed mood he did not take much notice; but he was certainly startled when he turned round to see Leah, in her dark dressing-gown, standing in the threshold watching him with a queer look in her eyes.  There was something in her expression that made him feel uneasy.

’"I thought it was thieves,” she said, and now she looked not at him, but across at the curtain.  “What are you doing with master’s papers, Mr. Eric?”

’"Mind your own business,” returned Eric sulkily:  “do you think I am going to account to you for my actions?” And he took up his candlestick and marched off.’

‘And he left that woman in possession?’

‘Yes,’ returned Gladys in a peculiar tone, and then she hurried on:  ’The next morning Giles missed a cheque for a large amount that he had received the previous night and placed in one of the compartments of his desk, and in its place he found Eric’s letter.  Do you notice the discrepancy here?  Eric vowed to me that he had placed the letter on the desk, that he never dreamt of opening it, that he always believed Giles kept it locked, that if Giles had been careless and left the key in it he knew nothing about it.  His business to the study was to put his letter where Giles would be likely to find it on entering the room.  Ursula, how did that letter get into the desk?