"But then, if he is mistaken! He really believes that Miss Dexter received the will from Dr. Larrone and has suppressed it."
Edmund got up suddenly, and looked down on her with what she felt to be a stern attention.
"And that," she concluded, looking bravely into the grave eyes bent on her, "I absolutely decline to believe!"
"Of course," said Grosse abruptly, "it's out of the question. It's just like a solicitor—fits his puzzle neatly together and is quite satisfied without seeing the gross absurdity of supposing that such a girl could carry on a huge fraud. A perfectly innocent, fresh, candid girl, brought up in a respectable English country house—the thing is ridiculous!"
He spoke with great feeling; he was more moved than she had seen him for a long time past, perhaps that was why she felt her own enthusiasm for Molly's innocence just a little damped. He sat down again as abruptly as he had risen.
"But it would be madness to drop the whole affair. This evidence of Nurse Edith's is really conclusive; and the only thing I can see to be said on the other side would be that David might have sent the will to Madame Danterre to give her the option of destroying it. But there is just another possibility, which Murray won't even consider, that Larrone destroyed the will on the journey."
"Do you know," said Rose, with a smile, "I believe it's conceivable that it is in the box, but that she has never opened the box at all! I believe a girl might shrink so much from reading that woman's papers that she might not even open the box."
"No one but a woman would have thought of such a possibility, but I daresay you are right."
He looked at her more gently, with more pleasure, and she instantly felt brighter.
"Then don't you think it would be possible to get at some plan, some arrangement with her? It seems to me," she went on earnestly, "that we ought to try to do it privately. Perhaps we might offer her the allowance that would have been made to her mother. If she could be convinced herself that the fortune is not really hers she might give it up without all the horrid shame and publicity of a trial."