"I do; Mr. Wilkes took special care of that."
"Is it true?"
"It is absolutely false. There is not one word of truth in it. It comes to me as a complete surprise. Never by so much as a word did your father lead me to suppose that he had such thoughts of me. I cannot conceive what can have been the condition of his mind when he wrote in such a strain. But that letter enables me to begin to understand that something must have happened to him mentally, and that when he committed suicide he actually was insane."
Miss Patterson tore the letter in half from top to bottom. The lawyer broke into exclamation.
"Miss Patterson! What are you doing? You must not do that! Not only is it not your letter, but it is a document of the gravest legal importance."
Paying him no heed whatever, the girl continued in silence the destruction of the letter, going about the business in the most thorough-going manner, reducing it to the tiniest atoms. When she had finished with the letter itself, she proceeded to dispose of the envelope, Mr. Wilkes expostulating hotly all the time, but kept from active interference by the insistent fashion with which Mr. Elmore prevented him from getting near the lady. Compelled at last to own that it was useless to attempt to stay her, he called upon his colleague to take notice of the outrage to which the letter was subjected, to say nothing of himself.
"Mr. Parmiter, you are witness of what is being done. This young lady, with the connivance and, indeed, assistance of this young man, is destroying a document of the first importance, which is not only in no sense her own property, but which was obtained from me by what is tantamount to an act of robbery, accompanied, in a legal sense, by violence. Of these facts you will be called upon, in due course, to give evidence."
Mr. Parmiter was still, but the lady spoke.
"Are you not forgetting that Mr. Parmiter is my solicitor, and that a solicitor cannot give evidence against his own client? I am sorry to have to seem to teach you law, Mr. Wilkes. Rodney, have you a match? If so, will you please burn these?"
She held out the fragments of the letter. Mr. Wilkes made a final attempt at salvage.