One morning while Lily Dale was staying with Mrs Thorne in London, there was brought up to her room, as she was dressing for dinner, a letter which the postman had just left for her. The address was written in a feminine hand, and Lily was at once aware that she did not know the writing. The angles were very acute, and the lines were very straight, and the vowels looked to be cruel and false, with their sharp points and their open eyes. Lily at once knew that it was the performance of a woman who had been taught to write at school, and not at home, and she became prejudiced against the writer before she opened the letter. When she had opened the letter and read it, her feelings towards the writer were not of a kindly nature. It was as follows:-'A lady presents her compliments to Miss L D and earnestly implores Miss L D to give her answer to the following question: Is Miss L D engaged to marry Mr J E? The lady in question pledges herself not to interfere with Miss L D in any way, should the answer be in the affirmative. The lady earnestly requests that a reply to this question may be sent to M DPost-office 455 Edgware Road. In order that L D may not doubt that M Dhad an interest in J E, M D encloses the last note she received from him before he started for the Continent.' Then there was a scrap, which Lily well knew to be in the handwriting of John Eames, and the scrap was as follows:--'Dearest M--punctually at 8.30. Ever and always your unalterable J E. Lily, as she read this, did not comprehend that John's note to M D had been in itself a joke.
Lily Dale had heard of anonymous letters before, but had never received one, or even received one. Now that she had one in her hand, it seemed to her that there could be nothing more abominable than the writing of such a letter. She let it drop from her as though the receiving, and opening, and reading it had been a stain to her. As it lay on the ground at her feet, she trod upon it. Of what sort could a woman be who wrote such a letter as that? Answer it! Of course she would not answer it. It never occurred to her for a moment that it could become her to answer it. Had she been at home with her mother, she would have called her mother to her, and Mrs Dale would have taken it from the ground, and have read it, and then destroyed it. As it was, she must pick it up herself. She did so, and declared to herself that there should be an end to it. It might be right that somebody should see it, and therefore she would show it to Emily Dunstable; after that it should be destroyed.
Of course the letter could have no effect upon her. So she told herself. But it did have a very strong effect, and probably the exact effect which the writer had intended that it should have. J E was, of course, John Eames. There was no doubt about that. What a fool the writer must have been to talk of L D in the letter, when the outside cover was plainly addressed to Lily Dale! But there are some people for whom the pretended mystery of initial letters has a charm, and who love the darkness of anonymous letters. As Lily thought of this, she stamped on the letter again. Who was the M D to whom she was required to send an answer--with whom John Eames corresponded in the most affectionate terms? She had resolved not even to ask a question about M D, and yet she could not divert her mind from the inquiry. It was, at any rate, a fact that there must be some woman designated by the letters--some woman who had, at any rate, chosen to call herself M D. and John Eames had called her M. There must, at any rate, be such a woman. This female, be she who she might, had thought it worth her while to make this inquiry about John Eames, and had manifestly learned something of Lily's own history. And the woman had pledged herself not to interfere with John Eames, if L D would only condescend to say that she was engaged to him!
As Lily thought of the proposition, she trod upon the letter for the third time. Then she picked it up, and having no place of custody under lock and key ready to her hand she put it in her pocket.
At night, before she went to bed, she showed the letter to Emily Dunstable. 'Is it not surprising that any woman could bring herself to write such a letter?' said Lily.
But Miss Dunstable hardly saw it in the same light. 'If anybody were to write me such a letter about Bernard,' said she, 'I should show to him as a good joke.'
'That would be very different. You and Bernard, of course, understand each other.'
'And so will you and Mr Eames--some day, I hope.'
'Never more than we do now, dear. The thing that annoys me is that such a woman as that should have even heard my name at all.'
'As long as people have got ears and tongues, people will hear other people's names.'
Lily paused a moment, and then spoke again, asking another question. 'Isuppose this woman does know him? She must know him, because he has written to her.'
'She knows something about him, no doubt, and has some reasons for wishing that you will quarrel with him. If I were you, I should take care not to gratify her. As for Mr Eames's note, it is a joke.'
'It is nothing to me,' said Lily.
'I suppose,' continued Emily, 'that most gentlemen become acquainted with some people that they would not wish all their friends to know that they knew. They go about so much more than we do, and meet people of all sorts.'
'No gentleman should become intimately acquainted with a woman who could write such a letter as that,' said Lily. And as she spoke she remembered a certain episode in John Eames's early life, which had reached her from a source which she had not doubted, and which had given her pain and offended her. She had believed that John Eames had in that case behaved very cruelly to a young woman, and had thought that her offence had come simply from that feeling. 'But of course it is nothing to me,' she said.
'Mr Eames can choose his friends as he likes. I only wish that my name might not be mentioned to them.'
'It is not from him that she has heard it.'