“. . .  Your telegram reassured me, though I was puzzled.  Now I get a letter from Lola, telling me it’s all off—­that she never loved me—­that she valued my youth and my friendship, but that it is best for us not to meet again.  What is the meaning of it, Simon?  For Heaven’s sake tell me.  I can’t think of anything else.  I can’t sleep.  I am going off my head. . . .”

Again. “. . .  This awful newspaper report and your letter of explanation—­I have them side by side.  Forgive me, Simon.  I don’t know what to believe, where to turn. . . .  I have looked up to you as the best and straightest man I know.  You must be.  Yet why have you done this?  Why didn’t you tell me she was married?  Why didn’t she tell me?  I can’t write properly, my head is all on a buzz.  The beastly papers say you were living with her in Algiers—­but you weren’t, were you?  It would be too horrible.  In fact, you say you weren’t.  But, all the same, you have stolen her from me.  It wasn’t like you. . . .  And this awful murder.  My God! you don’t know what it all means to me.  It’s breaking my heart. . . .”

And Lady Kynnersley wrote—­with what object I scarcely know.  The situation was far beyond the poor lady’s by-laws and regulations for the upbringing of families and the conduct of life.  The elemental mother in her battled on the side of her only son—­foolishly, irrationally, unkindly.  Her exordium was as correct as could be.  The tragedy shocked her, the scandal grieved her, the innuendoes of the Press she refused to believe; she sympathised with me deeply.  But then she turned from me to Dale, and feminine unreason took possession of her pen.  She bitterly reproached herself for having spoken to me of Madame Brandt.  Had she known how passionate and real was this attachment, she would never have interfered.  The boy was broken-hearted.  He accused me of having stolen her from him—­his own words.  He took little interest in his electioneering campaign, spoke badly, unconvincingly; spent hours in alternate fits of listlessness and anger.  She feared for her darling’s health and reason.  She made an appeal to me who professed to love him—­if it were honourably possible, would I bring Madame Brandt back to him?  She was willing now to accept Dale’s estimate of her worth.  Could I, at the least, prevail on Madame Brandt to give him some hope—­of what she did not know—­but some hope that would save him from ruining his career and “doing something desperate”?

And another letter from Dale: 

“. . .  I can’t work at this election.  For God’s sake, give her back to me.  Then I won’t care.  What is Parliament to me without her?  And the election is as good as lost already.  The other side has made as much as possible of the scandal. . . .”

The only letters that have not been misery to read have come from Eleanor Faversham.  There was one passage which made me thank God that He had created such women as Eleanor—­