“But you haven’t sent it”

“Yes, papa;—­it is in the post”

Then it occurred to him that his wife would tell him that he should have prevented the sending of the letter,—­that he should have destroyed it and altogether taken the matter with a high hand.  “You can’t tell her yourself?” he asked.

“I would rather you did.  Mamma has been so hard to me since I came home.”

He did tell his wife and she overwhelmed him by the violence of her reproaches.  He could never have been in earnest, or he would not have allowed such a letter as that to pass through his hands.  He must be afraid of his own child.  He did not know his own duty.  He had been deceiving her,—­his wife,—­from first to last.  Then she threw herself into a torrent of tears declaring that she had been betrayed.  There had been a conspiracy between them, and now everything might go to the dogs, and she would not lift up her hands again to save them.  But before the evening came round she was again on the alert, and again resolved that she would not even yet give way.  What was there in a letter more than in a spoken word?  She would tell Larry to disregard the letter.  But first she made a futile attempt to clutch the letter from the guardianship of the Post Office, and she went to the Postmaster assuring him that there had been a mistake in the family, that a wrong letter had been put into a wrong envelope, and begging that the letter addressed to Mr. Twentyman might be given back to her.  The Postmaster, half vacillating in his desire to oblige a neighbour, produced the letter and Mrs. Masters put out her hand to grasp it; but the servant of the public,—­who had been thoroughly grounded in his duties by one of those trusty guardians of our correspondence who inspect and survey our provincial post offices,—­remembered himself at the last moment and expressing the violence of his regret, replaced the letter in the box.  Mrs. Masters, in her anger and grief, condescended to say very hard things to her neighbour; but the man remembered his duty and was firm.

On that evening Larry Twentyman did not attend the Dillsborough Club, having in the course of the week notified to the attorney that he should be a defaulter.  Mr. Masters himself went over earlier than usual, his own house having become very uncomfortable to him.  Mrs. Masters for an hour sat expecting that Larry would come, and when the evening passed away without his appearance, she was convinced that the unusual absence was a part of the conspiracy against her.

Larry did not get his letter till the Monday morning.  On the last Thursday and Saturday he had consoled himself for his doubts with the U.R.U., and was minded to do so on the Monday also.  He had not gone to the club on Saturday and had moped about Chowton all the Sunday in a feverish state because of his doubts.  It seemed to him that the two months would never be over.  On the Monday he was out early on the farm and then came down in his boots and