The handwriting seemed familiar to Oswyn, and his hand trembled slightly as he turned to the signature for corroboration.  As he guessed, it was from Lightmark.

“I think I had better read this,” he said grimly, half to himself.

He glanced quickly through the letter, and then read it a second time slowly, and while he was reading it his expression was such as to confirm the solicitor’s previous opinion, that the man was a little bit mad.

When he had finished his perusal (he thought at the time that he should never forget a single word of that disgraceful letter), Oswyn sat in silence for some minutes, intently watching Mr. Furnival’s struggles with a large bundle of papers and a small black bag.

The letter had, if such a thing were possible, increased his contempt for the writer; that the man was insincere (Oswyn would have used a far stronger term) he had been aware from the beginning; now he knew that he was a coward, a creature almost unworthy of his hatred.

A quick thought struck him, and he smiled.

“We won’t burn this—­at present, at any rate,” he said quietly.  “Is there anything else for me to read?”

The lawyer shuffled the remaining papers together quickly.

“I think not:  these are chiefly bills which have since been paid.  Will you keep that letter, or do you wish us to do anything about it?”

Oswyn deliberated for a moment, with a curious expression flitting over his face, biting his lip and frowning slightly, as he gazed at the fireplace, where Rainham’s long-cherished letters from Eve and Lady Garnett’s delicate, witty compositions were represented by a little heap of wavering black ashes.

The lawyer looked at his watch uneasily.

“I beg your pardon,” said Oswyn quickly; “I needn’t keep you any longer.  Will you let me have an envelope?  I dare say they can give me Mr. Sylvester’s address downstairs—­Mr. Charles Sylvester, the barrister?”

“The new member, you mean, of course?” said the lawyer.  “He has chambers in Paper Buildings, No. 11.  Do you know him?”

“I am going to send him this letter,” said Oswyn briefly, folding it up and bestowing it in the envelope which Mr. Furnival had given him.  “Thanks, no, I needn’t trouble you to have it posted:  I prefer to leave it at Mr. Sylvester’s chambers myself.”

“He was a great friend of the late Mr. Rainham, as, of course, you know,” said the lawyer, as they parted at the door.  “Mr. Rainham introduced him to us when he was quite a young man—­soon after he was called, in fact, and we gave him his first brief—­the first of a good many!  He’s been one of our standing counsel for years.  Good-day!”

As he made his way towards the Temple, Oswyn smiled to himself rather savagely, tasting in anticipation the sweets of long-deferred revenge.  The flame of his ancient discontent with the academical art of the day, which had been fed by his personal hatred of one particularly successful exponent of it, was fanned into fury.  And, at the same time, as he proceeded, with short, hasty steps, amply armed for the vindication of his friend, in his grim fatalism he seemed to himself immensely the instrument of destiny, which had so given his enemy into his hands.