You would never get to see her. We none of us
know the rights, but there's something up. Sorry to say it, Sir
Charles, but we have strict orders not to admit you. Haven't you the
admiral's letter, sir?"
"No; what letter?"
"He has been after you, sir; and when he came back he sent Roger off to
your house with a letter."
A cold chill began to run down Sir Charles Bassett. He hailed a passing
hansom, and drove to his own house to get the admiral's letter; and as
he went he asked himself, with chill misgivings, what on earth had
happened.
What had happened shall be told the reader precisely but briefly. .
In the first place, Bella had opened the anonymous letter and read its
contents, to which the reader is referred.
There are people who pretend to despise anonymous letters. Pure
delusion! they know they ought to, and so fancy they do; but they
don't. The absence of a signature gives weight, if the letter is ably
written and seems true.
As for poor Bella Bruce, a dove's bosom is no more fit to rebuff a
poisoned arrow than she was to combat that foulest and direst of all a
miscreant's weapons, an anonymous letter. She, in her goodness and
innocence, never dreamed that any person she did not know could
possibly tell a lie to wound her. The letter fell on her like a cruel
revelation from heaven.
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