“But,” continued David, “there’s another side to the matter. Supposing I marry— I don’t feel drawn to marriage I own,—but supposing I do, supposing I have a son, won’t he possibly turn on me? Won’t he ask what earthly right I had to renounce what wasn’t mine alone, but which belonged to him as well? Won’t he ask why on earth I raked up the whole business if I was going to funk it in the end? Won’t he say, ‘You made a fight for a thing which was yours and mine. You got it. If it had been yours alone you would have had every right to chuck it up. But it wasn’t. You had no right to throw away what belonged to me.’”
Elizabeth was dumb. Truly had this aspect of affairs not dawned upon her. For a minute, for two minutes, she was faced with a new problem. Then suddenly, eagerly, she sprang at its solution.
“Legally,” she announced, “in strict justice, the inheritance may be yours. In equity I don’t believe it is at all.”
“What do you mean?” asked David.
“The whole thing,” said Elizabeth firmly, “turned on that missing document. Those old letters—my brother has told me about them—proved that there had been such a document. From the legal point of view those letters were worthless, but only from the legal point of view. Taking them into consideration, you could renounce the property at once with a clear conscience. Indeed,” pursued Elizabeth judicially, “if you want to act from the merely conscientious point of view, disregarding the strict legality of the matter, it would be, to my mind, the only thing to do.”
David gazed at her.
“I never thought of those letters,” he said slowly.
“Never thought of them!” cried Elizabeth. “Why they were the crux of the whole business, the only standpoint the present owners had to work from.”
“Oh, I see that now you’ve said it,” replied David. “But, honest injun, I’ve only just seen it clearly. Perhaps you will hardly believe me, but it’s true. I left the details of the affair to the solicitors. I began to get a bit sick of the job after I’d got hold of the clues. I gave them all I’d collected, and told them to bring the matter through. I knew of the letters, of course, but somehow never thought of the point of view you’ve put forward. It seems incredible, but I didn’t.”
“I can quite believe that,” said Elizabeth thoughtfully.