“Does it need any explanation but that we loved each other?”
“You will find it difficult to convince the world that such was your sole motive.”
“Having no care for the opinion of the world, I shall be satisfied if I convince you. The world needs never hear of the thing. Would you, Mr. Graeme, have had me not marry her, because the world, including not a few honest men like yourself, would say my object was the property?”
“Don’t put the question to me; I am not the proper person to answer it. There is not a man in a hundred millions who with the chance would not have done the same, or whom all the rest would not blame for doing it. It would have been better for you, however, that there had been no will.”
“How?”
“It makes it look the more like a scheme:—the will might have been disputed.”
“Why do you say—might have been?”
“Because it is not worth disputing now. If the marriage stands, it annuls the will.”
“I did not know; and I suppose she did not know either. Or perhaps she wanted to make the thing sure: if the marriage was not enough, the will would be—she may have thought. But I knew nothing of it.”
“You did not?”