"Oh! I am glad to learn, at least, that there will be no trouble. I
have no knowledge of business, and I thought that--"
"No--no--your ladyship need have no such ideas. In fact, I have already
anticipated your arrival, and have sent to the manager of the company.
He certainly went so far as to express a doubt as to the cause of
death. Consumption in any form was not supposed to be in your husband's
family. But Lord Harry--ahem!--tried his constitution--tried his
constitition, as I put it."
He had put it a little differently. What he said was to the following
effect--"Lord Harry Norland, sir, was a devil. There was nothing he did
not do. I only wonder that he has lived so long. Had I been told that
he died of everything all together, I should not have been surprised.
Ordinary rapid consumption was too simple for such a man."
Iris gave the lawyer her London address, obeyed him by drawing a
hundred pounds, half of which she sent to Mr. William Linville, at
Louvain, and went home to wait. She must now stay in London until the
claim was discharged.
She waited six weeks. At the end of that time she learned from her
solicitors that the company had settled, and that they, the lawyers,
had paid to her bankers the sum of 15,000 pounds being the whole of the
insurance.
Acting, then, on her husband's instructions, she sought another bank
and opened an account for one William Linville, gentleman, residing
abroad. She gave herself as a reference, left the usual signature of
William Linville, and paid to his account a cheque for 8,000 pounds.
She saw the manager of her own bank, explained that this large cheque
was for an investment, and asked him to let her have 2,000 pounds in
bank notes. 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."