"Ah!" he thought to himself, "that game is up. Belle is not my legal
wife, therefore I cannot commence a suit against her in which Cossey
would figure as co-respondent, and so the consideration fails. I am
sorry, for I should have liked him to lose his thirty thousand pounds
as well as his wife, but it can't be helped. It was a game of bluff,
and now that the bladder has been pricked I haven't a leg to stand
on."
Then, taking a pen, he wrote on a sheet of paper which he inserted in
the will, "Dear B.,--You must return the Honham mortgages to Mr.
Edward Cossey. As you are not my legal wife the consideration upon
which he transferred them fails, and you cannot hold them in equity,
nor I suppose would you wish to do so.--W. Q."
Having put all the papers away, he shut the safe at the moment that
the clerk whom he had deputed to watch his wife knocked at the door
and entered.
"Well?" said his master.
"Well, sir, I watched the woman. She stopped in the passage for a
minute, and then George, Squire de la Molle's man, came out and spoke
to her. I got quite close so as to hear, and he said, 'You'd better
get out of this.'
"'Where to?' she answered. 'I'm afraid.'
"'Back to London,' he said, and gave her a sovereign, and she got up
without a word and slunk off to the station followed by a mob of
people.
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