"You are certain he will leave me twenty thousand pounds?"
"The simple fact of his death will make it yours. So soon as the breath is out of his body you will become entitled to a wife's inheritance--if you are his wife."
"You are not playing me any trick? It is all just as you say?"
"On my honour, it is all just as I say. There is no trick. If you will come with me upstairs you will be able to judge for yourself."
"But how can we be married at a moment's notice? Is there a clergyman in the house?"
"You forget you are in Scotland. Neither notice nor clergyman is needed. It will be sufficient for you to recognise each other as husband and wife in the presence of witnesses; that act of mutual recognition will in itself constitute a legal marriage which all the lawyers will not be able to break. That is why it will be easier for him to marry than to make another will."
"There is not the least doubt that he will be dead within two hours?"
"Not the least--unless a miracle intervenes."
She was sitting with her hands clenched in her lap, a perceptible interval of silence intervening before the words burst from her lips--
"Then I'll marry him!"