“I can tell you just as well without breaking the seal,” said he, with a half scornful smile. “I know the very tone and style of it, and I recognise the pluck with which such a man, when a thousand miles off, dares to address one like myself.”
“Read it, though; let me hear his own words!” cried she.
“I’m not impatient for it,” said he; “I have had a sufficient dose of bitters this morning, and I’d just as soon spare myself the acrid petulance of this poor creature.”
“You are very provoking, I must say,” said she, angrily, and turned away towards the house. Calvert watched her till she disappeared behind a copse, and then hastily broke open the letter.
“Sir--My father has forwarded to me a letter which, with very questionable good taste, you addressed to him. The very relations which subsisted between us when we parted, might have suggested a more delicate course on your part. Whatever objections I might then, however, have made to your interference in matters personal to myself, have now become something more than mere objections, and I flatly declare that I will not listen to one word from a man whose name is now a shame and a disgrace throughout Europe. That you may quit the roof which has sheltered you hitherto without the misery of exposure, I have forborne in my letter to narrate the story which is on every tongue here; but, as the price of this forbearance, I desire and I exact that you leave the villa on the day you receive this, and cease from that day forth to hold any intercourse with the family who reside in it. If I do not, therefore, receive a despatch by telegraph, informing me that you accede to these conditions, I will forward by the next post the full details which the press of England is now giving of your infamous conduct and of the legal steps which are to be instituted against you.
“Remember distinctly, Sir, that I am only in this pledging myself for that short interval of time which will suffer you to leave the house of those who offered you a refuge against calamity--not crime--and whose shame would be overwhelming if they but knew the character of him they sheltered. You are to leave before night-fall of the day this reaches, and never to return. You are to abstain from all correspondence. I make no conditions as to future acquaintanceship, because I know that were I even so minded, no efforts of mine could save you from that notoriety which a few days more will attach to you, never to leave you.