"Swear to me by all that you hold sacred--if there's anything!--that it wasn't Margaret Wallace at the door."
"Margaret Wallace!--are you stark mad?"
"I believe you're tricking me! I believe I heard her voice! I believe I heard her pronounce my name!"
"If I had thought that you could have got such an idea into your head as that, I'd have thrown the door wide open, and invited that murderous ruffian to walk upstairs to you. Then you would have seen how much he was like Margaret Wallace--that is, if she's anything like the picture which you showed me. You've been talking and thinking so much about Margaret Wallace that you've got her on the brain. Do you think that if it had been her I wouldn't have brought her right up to you? You're very much mistaken if you do. I'm no saint, any more than you are, but I'd no more rob a woman of her happiness than you would--perhaps not so much. You did try to rob her, and you got me to be your accomplice--blindfold, as it were. If I'd known what you've told me this afternoon I'd have seen you--and old Twelves!--the other side of Jordan before I'd let you make a tool of me. Now that I do know, I won't rest quiet till you've put her back into the position in which she was before. Here's that will I spoke to you about. It's the same as the one which was spoilt, except that it leaves me five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds will be of no consequence to her, while it will make all the difference in the world to me. After the way in which you've treated me I ought to have something, and that's the something I mean to have."
Taking out the will which left everything to Margaret Wallace except the £5,000, she held it out in front of Cuthbert Grahame. He read it through.
"That seems all right. Will you help me sign it?"
"Of course I'll help you sign it--now if you choose, though I've dated it to-morrow, because I thought that would give you a chance to think things over. I tell you that I shan't rest till that girl's back into her own again." For some moments he was silent, then he said--
"Perhaps I was mistaken."
"Mistaken about what?"
"Perhaps it wasn't her voice I heard."