"And she has not come to her senses yet?"
"She has at length," was the answer. "I received a letter yesterday from the keeper of the asylum, stating that her spirit is broken, and that she is now ready to obey her husband in all things. The keeper wrote to me a few days ago to state that his mode of cure was producing a favourable result; and yesterday he intimated to me by another letter that the mode alluded to had proved completely successful."
"What course do you now intend to pursue?" demanded Tomlinson, who began to suspect the manner in which his services were to be made available.
"I immediately communicated the important contents of this second letter to Greenwood," continued Chichester, "and he recommended me to apply to you to aid me in completing the business. My wife now sees her folly, and is willing to devote one half of her property—namely, eight thousand pounds, to the use and purposes of her lawful husband; and I am generous enough to be satisfied with that sum, instead of insisting upon having the whole."
"I understand you," said Tomlinson: "you require a stock-broker to effect the transfer of eight thousand pounds from the name of your wife into your own name."
"And to sell out the amount when so transferred," added Chichester.
"It will be necessary for me to obtain the signature of your wife to a certain paper," observed Tomlinson.
"Greenwood has told me all this. In one word, will you accompany me to the asylum where my wife is confined, and obtain her signature?"
"If she be willing to give it, I am willing to receive it—as a matter of business," answered Tomlinson. "But, are you sure—in a word, what guarantee have you that she will not denounce the whole proceeding to the officers of justice—rally her friends around her—appeal to the law—and punish every one concerned in the business?"
"Listen. The document which she agrees to sign is a general power on my behalf over eight thousand pounds in the Bank of England: this power will be dated two months back—a month after our marriage. We must be supposed to have called at your office on a particular day at that period, on which occasion she signed the power in your presence. It being a general power of transfer, it would not seem extraordinary that I did not use it until now—that is, two months after it was given. This night must she sign the deed: to-morrow you must transfer and sell out the money. Then to-morrow night, she shall be conveyed back to the house at Cambridge Heath. The two servants whom we keep are bribed to my interest: they are ready, in case of need, to prove the existence of those symptoms of insanity which justified the certificates of the surgeons and the restraint under which my wife has been placed. How, then, can she do us an injury? If she proclaim her 'wrongs'—as she may call them, you can prove that the power of transfer could not have been extorted from her in a mad-house, as it was signed two months ago at your office! Then, if she were to speak of the mode of treatment adopted by the keeper of that mad-house to curb her haughty spirit, the accusation would be indignantly denied; and her statements would be set down to a disordered imagination, and would justify further restraint. Be you well assured, that she will never say or do any thing that may endanger her liberty again! No—the fact is simply this: we divide the property, and separate for ever. She will be glad to get rid of a husband like me: I shall not be sorry to dissolve—as far as we can dissolve it—a connexion with a woman of her mean, griping, and avaricious disposition."