"Why must you forge the letter? Why not come with me somewhere—the world is large!—to some place where you are not known, and there let us begin a new life? We have not much money, but I can sell my watches and chains and rings, and we shall have enough. O Harry! for once be guided—listen to me! We shall find some humble manner of living, and we may be happy yet. There is no harm done if you have only pretended to be dead; nobody has been injured or defrauded—"
"Iris, you talk wildly! Do you imagine, for one moment, that the doctor will release me from my bargain?"
"What bargain?"
"Why—of course he was to be paid for the part he has taken in the business. Without him it could never have been done at all."
"Yes—yes—it was in the letter that you gave me," she said, conscious that such agreements belonged to works of fiction and to police courts.
"Certainly I have to pay him a good large slice out of the money."
"It is fifteen thousand pounds, is it not? How much is to be paid to the—to the doctor?"
"We agreed that he was to have the half," said Lord Harry, laughing lightly. "But as I thought that seven thousand five hundred pounds was a sum of money which would probably turn his head and bring him to starvation in a year or two, I told him that the whole amount was four thousand pounds. Therefore he is to have two thousand pounds for his share. And quite enough too."
"Treachery on treachery!" said his wife. "Fraud on fraud! Would to GOD," she added with a sigh, "that you had never met this man!"
"I dare say it would have been better for me, on the whole," he replied. "But then, my dear, a man like myself is always meeting people whom it would have been better not to have met. Like will to like, I suppose. Given the active villain and the passive consenter, and they are sure to meet. Not that I throw stones at the worthy doctor. Not at all."