This sum, she added, was for a special purpose. The manager
imagined that she was about to perform some act of charity, perhaps an
expiatory work on behalf of her late husband.
She then wrote to Dr. Vimpany, who was in Paris, making an appointment
with him. Her work of fraud and falsehood was complete.
"There has been no trouble at all," she wrote to her husband; "and
there will not be any. The insurance company has already settled the
claim. I have paid 8,000 pounds to the account of William Linville. My
own banker--who knows my father--believes that the money is an
investment. My dear Harry, I believe that, unless the doctor begins to
worry us--which he will do as soon as his money is all gone--a clear
course lies before us. Let us, as I have already begged you to do, go
straight away to some part of America, where you are certain not to be
known. You can dye your hair and grow a beard to make sure. Let us go
away from every place and person that may remind us of time past.
Perhaps, in time, we may recover something of the old peace and--can it
ever be?--the old self-respect."
There was going to be trouble, however, and that of a kind little
expected, impossible to be guarded against.
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