“Who cares for that?” said she, carelessly. “It is a trifling offence. Where is the other,—the will?”
“I have it here,” said he, pointing to his breast-pocket
“Let us make a bonfire, then,” said she, “for I, too, have some inconvenient records to get rid of. I thought of keeping them as memories, but I suspect I shall need no reminders.”
While Trover tore the forged will in pieces, she did the like by the letters, and, a match being applied to the fragments, the flames rose up, and in a few seconds the blackened remnants were carried away by the winds, and lost.
“So, then, Mr. Trover,” said she, at length, “Norfolk Island has been defrauded of your society for this time. By the way, papa, is not this Dr. Layton your friend as well as mine?”
“Yes, Loo, he is the man of ozone and vulcanized zinc, and I don't know what else. I hoped he had died ere this.”
“No, papa, they don't die. If you remark, you 'll see that the people whose mission it is to torment are wonderfully long-lived, and if I were an assurance agent, I 'd take far more account of men's tempers than their gout tendencies and dropsies. Was there any allusion to papa, Mr. Trover?”
“Yes; old Layton seems to have a warrant, or something of the kind, against him, on a grave charge, but I had no mind to hear what.”
“So that, I suppose,” said she, laughing, “I am the only 'innocent' in the company; for you know, Mr. Trover, that I forged nothing, falsified nothing; I was betrayed, by my natural simplicity of character, into believing that a fortune was left me. I never dreamed that Mr. Trover was a villain.”
“I don't know how you take it so easily. We have escaped transportation, it is true, but we have not escaped public shame and exposure,” said Trover, peevishly.