How your cowardly crime must have brightened his last hours! "Yours,-- "E.

Scarfe." Jeffreys pitched this elegant specimen of polite Billingsgate contemptuously into the grate.

He was not much a man of the world, but he could read through the lines of a poor performance like this.
Scarfe, for some reason or other, did not like to tell the Rimbolts himself, but he was most anxious they should know, and desired Jeffreys to do the dirty work himself.

There was something almost amusing in the artlessness of the suggestion, and had the subject been less personally grievous, Jeffreys could have afforded to scoff at the whole business.
He sat down on the impulse of the moment and dashed off the following reply:-- "Dear Scarfe,--Would it not be a pity that your sense of duty should not have the satisfaction of doing its own work, instead of begging me to do it for you?
I may be all you say, but I am not mean enough to rob you of so priceless a jewel as the good conscience of a man who has done his duty.

So I respectfully decline your invitation, and am,-- "Yours,-- "J.