The young man looked at him a moment. "Do you think they're
genuine?" He didn't mean to be mocking, he meant not to be; but the
words sounded so to his own ear, and he could see that they produced
that effect on Mr. Locket.

"I can't in the least determine. I shall have to go into them at my
leisure, and that's why I ask you to lend them to me."

He had shuffled the papers together with a movement charged, while he
spoke, with the air of being preliminary to that of thrusting them
into a little black bag which he had brought with him and which,
resting on the shelf of the davenport, struck Peter, who viewed it
askance, as an object darkly editorial. It made our young man,
somehow, suddenly apprehensive; the advantage of which he had just
been conscious was about to be transferred by a quiet process of
legerdemain to a person who already had advantages enough. Baron, in
short, felt a deep pang of anxiety; he couldn't have said why. Mr.
Locket took decidedly too many things for granted, and the explorer
of Sir Dominick Ferrand's irregularities remembered afresh how clear
he had been after all about his indisposition to traffic in them. He
asked his visitor to what end he wished to remove the letters, since
on the one hand there was no question now of the article in the
Promiscuous which was to reveal their existence, and on the other he
himself, as their owner, had a thousand insurmountable scruples about
putting them into circulation.

Mr. Locket looked over his spectacles as over the battlements of a
fortress. "I'm not thinking of the end--I'm thinking of the
beginning. A few glances have assured me that such documents ought
to be submitted to some competent eye."