But Richard Paulette had very little to say about the matter. He had known Edward Arundel's father, and he had known the young soldier from his early boyhood, and he seemed deeply grieved to witness his client's distress; but he had nothing to say against Paul Marchmont.
"I cannot see what right you have to suspect Mr. Marchmont of any guilty share in your wife's disappearance," he said. "Do not think I defend him because he is our client. You know that we are rich enough, and honourable enough, to refuse the business of any man whom we thought a villain. When I was in Lincolnshire, Mr. Marchmont did everything that a man could do to testify his anxiety to find his cousin."
"Oh, yes," Edward Arundel answered bitterly; "that is only consistent with the man's diabolical artifice; that was a part of his scheme. He wished to testify that anxiety, and he wanted you as a witness to his conscientious search after my––poor––lost girl." His voice and manner changed for a moment as he spoke of Mary.
Richard Paulette shook his head.
"Prejudice, prejudice, my dear Arundel," he said; "this is all prejudice upon your part, I assure you. Mr. Marchmont behaved with perfect honesty and candour. 'I won't tell you that I'm sorry to inherit this fortune,' he said, 'because if I did you wouldn't believe me––what man in his senses could believe that a poor devil of a landscape painter would regret coming into eleven thousand a year?––but I am very sorry for this poor little girl's unhappy fate.' And I believe," added Mr. Paulette, decisively, "that the man was heartily sorry."
Edward Arundel groaned aloud.
"O God! this is too terrible," he muttered. "Everybody will believe in this man rather than in me. How am I to be avenged upon the wretch who caused my darling's death?"
He talked for a long time to the lawyer, but with no result. Richard Paulette considered the young man's hatred of Paul Marchmont only a natural consequence of his grief for Mary's death.
"I can't wonder that you are prejudiced against Mr. Marchmont," he said; "it's natural; it's only natural; but, believe me, you are wrong. Nothing could be more straightforward, and even delicate, than his conduct. He refuses to take possession of the estate, or to touch a farthing of the rents. 'No,' he said, when I suggested to him that he had a right to enter in possession,––'no; we will not shut the door against hope. My cousin may be hiding herself somewhere; she may return by–and–by. Let us wait a twelvemonth. If at the end of that time, she does not return, and if in the interim we receive no tidings from her, no evidence of her existence, we may reasonably conclude that she is dead; and I may fairly consider myself the rightful owner of Marchmont Towers. In the mean time, you will act as if you were still Mary Marchmont's agent, holding all moneys as in trust for her, but to be delivered up to me at the expiration of a year from the day on which she disappeared.' I do not think anything could be more straightforward than that," added Richard Paulette, in conclusion.
"No," Edward answered, with a sigh; "it seems very straightforward. But the man who could strike at a helpless girl by means of a lying paragraph in a newspaper––"