"May I ask your reason for this secrecy?"
"No, Mr. Greenwood; it is just that one reason that I cannot tell you.
Accept my assurance that it was an all-powerful reason."
"I am compelled to do so, if you decline to confide in my discretion; but as Mr. Sheldon is my client, I am bound to think of his interests as well as those of Miss Halliday—er—Mrs. Hawkehurst. I am somewhat surprised that he has not called upon me since the marriage. He has been made aware of that circumstance, I suppose?"
"Yes; I wrote to him immediately after the ceremony, enclosing him a copy of the certificate."
"The marriage will make a considerable difference to him."
"In what manner?"
"Well, in the event of his stepdaughter's death. If she had died unmarried and intestate, this fortune would have gone to her mother; besides which, there was the insurance on Miss Halliday's life."
"An insurance!"
"Yes. Were you not apprised of that fact? Mr. Sheldon, with very natural precaution, insured his stepdaughter's life for a considerable sum—in point of fact, as I believe, five thousand pounds; so that, in case of her death prior to the recovery of the Haygarth estate, her mother might receive some solatium."
"He had insured her life!" said Valentine, under his breath.