A Good Man's Dilemma by Stanley J. Weyman

The clock of St. Martin's was striking ten as Archdeacon Yale, of Studbury, in Gloucestershire, who had taken breakfast at the Athenaeum, walked down the club steps, eastward bound. He was a man of fresh complexion and good presence; of tolerable means and some reputation as the author of a curiously morbid book, "Timon Defended. " As he walked the pavement briskly, an unopened letter which peeped from his pocket seemed -- and rightly -- to indicate a man free from anxieties: a man without a care.

Before he left the dignified stillness of Pall Mall, however, he found leisure to read the note. "I enclose," wrote his wife, "a letter which came for you this morning. I trust, Cyprian, that you are not fretting about the visitation question and that you get your meals fairly well cooked. " The Archdeacon paused at this point and smiled as at some pleasant reminiscence. "Give my love to dear Jack. Oh -- h'm -- I do not recognise your correspondent's handwriting."