You can clear away those things, and bring me some tea.' When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table, and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter.

This she read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.
'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the spot.

A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival in the country will precipitate matters.

From all I hear I much fear that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him.

You have asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.
His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last sixpence he owns will be answerable.