Now, as it is good for those to tell who intend preserving their taste for romance and hate anatomical lectures, we never can come to the exact motives of any extraordinary piece of conduct on the part of man or woman.  Girls are to read; and the study of a boy starts from the monkey.  But no literary surgeon or chemist shall explain positively the cause of the behaviour of men and women in their relations together; and speaking to rescue my story, I say we must with due submission accept the facts.  We are not a bit the worse for wondering at them.  So it happened that Lord Fleetwood’s reply to Lord Levellier’s hammer—­hammer by post and messenger at his door, one may call it, on the subject of the celebration of the marriage of the young Croesus and Carinthia Jane, in which there was demand for the fixing of a date forthwith, was despatched on the day when London had tidings of Henrietta Pakenham’s wedding.

The letter, lost for many years, turned up in the hands of a Kentish auctioneer, selling it on behalf of a farm-serving man, who had it from Lord Levellier’s cook and housemaid, among the things she brought him as her wifely portion after her master’s death, and this she had not found saleable in her husband’s village at her price, but she had got the habit of sticking to the scraps, being proud of hearing it said that she had skinned Leancats to some profit:  and her expectation proved correct after her own demise, for her husband putting it up at the auction; our relative on the mother’s side, Dr. Glossop, interested in the documents and particulars of the story as he was, had it knocked down to him, in contest with an agent of a London gentleman, going as high as two pounds ten shillings, for the sum of two pounds and fifteen shillings.  Count the amount that makes for each word of a letter a marvel of brevity, considering the purport!  But Dr. Glossop was right in saying he had it cheap.  The value of that letter may now be multiplied by ten:  nor for that sum would he part with it.

Thus it ran, I need not refer to it in Bundle No. 3: 

’My lord:  I drive to your church-door on the fourteenth of the month
at ten A.M., to keep my appointment with Miss C. J. Kirby, if I do
not blunder the initials. 
’Your lordship’s obedient servant,
‘Fleetwood.’

That letter will ever be a treasured family possession with us.

That letter was dated from Lord Fleetwood’s Kentish mansion, Esslemont, the tenth of the month.  He must have quitted London for Esslemont, for change of scene, for air, the moment after the news of Henrietta’s marriage.  Carinthia Jane received the summons without transmission of the letter from her uncle on the morning of the twelfth.  It was a peremptory summons.