Virginia Revel is blackmailed

Virginia Revel is blackmailed when a stranger confronts her with letters bearing her name and claims they can expose an old affair. The encounter makes the threat tangible: Virginia reads a letter, recognizes her signature, and understands what the packet could imply. Yet she does not simply concede to the blackmailer’s price. She tests his assumptions, bargains for time, and pays him about £40 rather than the £1,000 he demands, converting an attempt at intimidation into a temporary negotiation.

The letter and the threat

The blackmailer first asks Virginia to examine an enclosure. She takes the envelope, draws out the letter, and initially protests that it is private and was not intended for her eyes. His accusation that she is acting only makes her inspect the signature more closely. On the reverse she sees her own name, written in a delicate, slanting hand. The discovery silences her; she then reads the letter from the beginning and takes a moment to think through its implications. The threat rests not merely on an old document but on the apparent proof of authorship and the intimate character of the correspondence.

The man says that he has read a packet of letters from a woman to her lover, each expressing fear that her husband will discover the affair. He threatens to take them to that husband. Virginia points out that blackmail is punishable by law, but he challenges whether she is prepared to seek legal help. He also treats her presence at the meeting as evidence that she has something to fear. His confidence depends on narrowing her choices: either she pays him or he makes the letters public.

Virginia's counter-bargain

Virginia does not accept the stranger’s account of what the letters mean. She raises a crucial alternative: the letters may have been written years earlier, and she may since have become a widow. He dismisses this possibility, reasoning that if she had nothing to fear she would not be negotiating with him. Virginia smiles, then asks his price in a businesslike manner. Her conduct does not remove the danger, but it puts the negotiation on explicit terms and reveals that she is assessing the demand rather than reacting in panic.

The blackmailer asks £1,000 for the packet, describing the sum as modest and saying he dislikes the business. Virginia decisively refuses to pay that amount. When she says she needs time to consider and would find it difficult to raise such a sum, he proposes that she give him £50 on account and that he return. She agrees to meet him the following day, but specifies a later hour—about six—than the time of this encounter.

The interim payment

Virginia looks at the clock and sees that it is five minutes past four. Thinking she may have heard the bell, she moves quickly to a desk, unlocks a drawer, and takes out an untidy handful of notes. Rather than produce the £50 requested, she hands over about £40, telling him that it will have to suffice. He snatches the money eagerly. Virginia then tells him to leave at once. The sequence gives the encounter a definite, practical outcome: the threat remains unresolved, but she has limited her immediate payment, secured time, and ended the meeting on her own instruction.

Significance within the wider plot

The episode makes possession of the letters a source of leverage and exposes the gap between a document’s private origin and the public story a blackmailer can construct from it. The stranger treats the signature and the references to a husband as decisive evidence; Virginia’s response shows that the same evidence can be challenged by chronology and circumstance. Her reference to widowhood does not settle the question for him, and the negotiation leaves the danger in place, but it disrupts his effort to dictate the terms.

Virginia’s payment is also a measured signal rather than full submission. She gives the man money, but not the amount he names; she agrees to a return visit, but chooses its hour; and she ends the present meeting by ordering him out. The scene therefore joins vulnerability to agency. The letters can still be used against her, yet the encounter establishes Virginia as a participant in the contest over them, capable of bargaining under pressure instead of allowing the blackmailer’s demand to determine the whole course of events.