He answered Lady Lydiard without caring to conceal that he resented the tone in which she had spoken to him.
"I undertook to deliver the letter at its address," he said.

"I found it, sealed, on the table.

Your Ladyship has the clergyman's written testimony that I handed it to him with the seal unbroken.

I have done my duty; and I have no explanation to offer." Before Lady Lydiard could speak again, Mr.Troy discreetly interfered.
He saw plainly that his experience was required to lead the investigation in the right direction.
"Pardon me, my Lady," he said, with that happy mixture of the positive and the polite in his manner, of which lawyers alone possess the secret.
"There is only one way of arriving at the truth in painful matters of this sort.

We must begin at the beginning.