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"Here, as we knorong, and I was forced to abandon that idea I faced the problem from a new standpoint Now, at 4 o'clock, Dorcas overheard her rily: 'You need not think that any fear of publicity, or scandal between husband and ill deter htly, that these words were addressed, not to her husband, but to Mr John Cavendish At 5 o'clock, an hour later, she uses almost the same words, but the standpoint is different She admits to Dorcas, 'I don't knohat to do; scandal between husband and wife is a dreadful thing' At 4 o'clock she has been angry, but completely mistress of herself At 5 o'clock she is in violent distress, and speaks of having had a great shock
"Looking at the ically, I drew one deduction which I was convinced was correct The second 'scandal' she spoke of was not the same as the first--and it concerned herself!
"Let us reconstruct At 4 o'clock, Mrs Inglethorp quarrels with her son, and threatens to denounce hireater part of the conversation At 430, Mrs Inglethorp, in consequence of a conversation on the validity of wills, ardeners witness At 5 o'clock, Dorcas finds her itation, with a slip of paper--'a letter,' Dorcas thinks--in her hand, and it is then that she orders the fire in her roohted Presu has occurred to occasion a co, since she is now as anxious to destroy the will, as she was before to ?
"As far as we know, she was quite alone during that half-hour Nobody entered or left that boudoir What then occasioned this sudden change of sentiuess to be correct Mrs Inglethorp had no stamps in her desk We know this, because later she asked Dorcas to bring her some Now in the opposite corner of the room stood her husband's desk--locked She was anxious to find so to my theory, she tried her own keys in the desk That one of them fitted I know She therefore opened the desk, and in searching for the sta else--that slip of paper which Dorcas saw in her hand, and which assuredly was never lethorp's eyes On the other hand, Mrs Cavendish believed that the slip of paper to which herso tenaciously was a written proof of her own husband's infidelity She delethorp who assured her, quite truly, that it had nothing to do with that ht that Mrs Inglethorp was shielding her stepson Now Mrs Cavendish is a very resolute woman, and, behind her mask of reserve, she was et hold of that paper at all costs, and in this resolution chance calethorp's despatch-case, which had been lost thatShe knew that her mother-in-law invariably kept all important papers in this particular case