“I can’t say there is anything approaching to proof.  But supposing, just for the sake of supposing, that you were right in your wild guess as to the will, then we should next go on to suppose that the real will was in the box conveyed by Dr. Larrone to Miss Dexter.”

Edmund’s face was very dark, but he did not speak for some moments.

“No,” he said, “she is incapable of such a crime.  She would have given it up at once.”

“At once?” Murray said.  “Miss Dexter was too ill to do anything at once.  She was down with influenza, of which she very nearly died, but she pulled through, and then went away for a month.  She only got back to London two weeks ago.  Her affairs are in the hands of a very respectable firm.  We know them, and they began this business with her a very short time before she came up.  Now Sir Edmund, think it well over.  You may be right in your opinion of this young lady, but just fancy the position.  There is a fortune of at least L20,000 a year on the one hand, and on the other, absolute poverty.  For do you suppose that, if it were in the last will which Akers and Stock witnessed on board ship, and there were any provision in it for Madame Danterre, Sir David Bright would have left capital absolutely in her possession?  No:  the probability is—­I am, of course, always supposing your original notion to be true—­that the girl has this choice of immense wealth practically unquestioned by the world which has settled down to the fact that Sir David left his money to Madame Danterre; or, on the other hand, extreme poverty (she inherited some L2,000 from her father) and public disgrace.  Mind you, she would have to announce that her mother was a criminal, and she would, in this just and high-minded world of ours, pass under a cloud herself.  A few, only a very few, would in the least appreciate her conduct.”

Sir Edmund was miserably uncomfortable, intensely averse to the results of what he had done.  In drawing his mesh of righteous intrigue round the mother he had never realised this situation.  For the moment he wished himself well out of it all.

“There is one other point,” he said.  “Are we quite sure that Dr. Larrone did not know what was in the box?  Is it not just possible that something was taken out of it before it was given to Miss Dexter?  He must have known there was a large legacy to himself; it was against his interests that Madame Danterre’s will should be set aside.  Also, it would not be a very comfortable situation for him if it turned out that he had been the intimate friend and highly-paid physician of a criminal.”

“That last motive fits the character of the man, according to Pietrino, better than the first,” said Mr. Murray.  “Well, we must see; we must wait and see whether he accepts his legacy.  But before that must come the publication of Madame Danterre’s will.”