I took it upstairs, and looked at the direction as I put it on the salver.

The handwriting was not my master's; was not, as it appeared to me, the handwriting of any well-educated person.

The outside of the letter was also very dirty, and the seal a common office-seal of the usual lattice-work pattern.

"This must be a begging-letter," I thought to myself as I entered the breakfast-room and advanced with it to my mistress.
She held up her hand before she opened it as a sign to me that she had some order to give, and that I was not to leave the room till I had received it.

Then she broke the seal and began to read the letter.
Her eyes had hardly been on it a moment before her face turned as pale as death, and the paper began to tremble in her fingers.