She tore up the letter and put the little pieces into the wastebasket, and began again.

This one was much more moderate, inviting misinterpretation, but phrased in such a manner that it could, at a stretch of the imagination, and with a great deal of charity, be explained reasonably innocently.

That was better. Please heaven she had not softened it too much, and it would still cause the necessary misgivings, and mistrust of anything Drusilla might say, the flickers of personal fear, the fellow feeling with another man who had had his words or his actions misconstrued by a vain and overeager woman.

She wrote several more. By the time she put her pen down at a quarter to ten, her hand ached and her eyes were stinging.

Two days later Lord Fontenoy opened his mail at the breakfast table. It appeared the usual collection of bills, invitations and polite letters of one sort or another. There was none which occasioned any unusual interest, and certainly no alarm . . . until he came to the last one.

Lady Fontenoy, who had been reading a letter from her cousin in Wales, heard him splutter, and looked up, then with some anxiety forgot her own mail entirely.

“My dear, are you all right? You look quite unwell. Is it distressing news?”

“No!” he said overloudly. “No, not at all,” he amended. “It is something quite trivial.” He strove to invent a plausible lie, something to account for his pale face and shaking hands, and yet not excite her curiosity so that she expected to read the wretched thing . . . which of course he could refuse, but he did not wish her suspicion aroused. He had a really most agreeable domestic life, and desired intensely to keep it so.

“No, my dear, it is simply a most foolish letter from someone who desires to make trouble in a quarter I had not foreseen. It's unpleasant, but nothing to cause undue worry. I shall deal with it.” Perhaps he was reacting too strongly. He recalled the phrases used. They had initially appalled him, but on second thought, they were ambiguous, capable of less demanding intent.

“Are you sure?” Lady Fontenoy pressed. “You do look very pale, Walter.” “I swallowed my tea a little hastily,” he replied. “I fear it did not go quite the right way. Uncomfortable. Please don't distress yourself. How is Dorothea? That is a letter from Dorothea, is it not?”

She realized that was the end of the conversation. She accepted that he would not mention it again, but she knew perfectly well that the letter he had received had shaken his composure very thoroughly, and she was not at ease for the rest of the day.

Sir Peter Welby was also highly upset by his morning mail. Being still a bachelor, now on the brink of a very fortunate marriage, he breakfasted alone, apart from the distant presence of his manservant.