He spread it out slightly with his fingers, as though abstractedly thinking of what he was about to say.

The initial in the corner was K.Kitty had left it on the table while she was talking to Mrs.Crozier a halfhour before.
Whatever Burlingame actually thought or believed, he could not now resist picking up the handkerchief and looking at it with a mocking smile.

It was too good a chance to waste.

He still hugged to his evil heart the humiliating remembrance of his expulsion from this house, the share Crozier had had in it, and the things which Crozier had said to him then.

He had his enemy now between the upper and the nether mill-stones, and he meant to grind him to the flour of utter abasement.
It was clear that the arrival of Mrs.Crozier had brought him no relief, for Crozier's face was not that of a man who had found and opened a casket of good fortune.
"Rather dangerous that, in the bedroom of a family man," he said, picking up the handkerchief and looking suggestively from the lettering in the corner to Crozier.