ugh's present intention to
make it understood that the scheme intended for the disinheritance of
Mountjoy had been false from the beginning to the end, and had been
arranged, not for the injury of Mountjoy, but for the salvation of the
estate from the hands of the Jews. Mountjoy would have lost nothing, as
the property would have gone entirely to the Jews had Mr. Scarborough
then died, and Mountjoy been taken as his legitimate heir. He was not
anxious, he had declared, to say anything on the present occasion in
defence of his conduct in that respect. He would soon be gone, and he
would leave men to judge him who might do so the more honestly when they
should have found that he had succeeded in paying even the Jews in full
the moneys which they had actually advanced. But now things were again
changed, and he was bound to go back to the correct order of things.

"No!" shouted Mr. Grey.

"To the correct order of things," he went on. Mountjoy Scarborough was,
he declared, undoubtedly legitimate. And then he made Merton and the
clerk bring forth all the papers, as though he had never brought forth
any papers to prove the other statement to Mr. Grey. And he did expect
Mr. Grey to believe them. Mr. Grey simply put them all back,
metaphorically, with his hand. There had been two marriages, absolutely
prepared with the intent of enabling him at some future time to upset
the law altogether, if it should seem good to him to do so.

"And your wife?" shouted Mr. Grey.

"Dear woman! She would have done anything that I told her,--unless I had
told her to do what was absolutely wrong."

"Not wrong!"

"Well, you know what I mean. She was the purest and best of women." Then
he went on with his tale. There had been two marriages, and he now
brought forth all the evidence of the former marriage. It had taken
place in a remote town, a village in the northern part of Prussia,
whither she had been taken by her mother to join him. The two ladies had
both been since long dead. He had been laid up at the little Prussian
town under the plea of a bad leg. He did not scruple to say now that the
bad leg had been pretence, and a portion of his scheme. The law, he
thought, in endeavoring to make arrangements for his property,--the
property which should have been his own,--had sinned so greatly as to
drive a wise man to much scheming. He had begun scheming early in the
business. But for his bad leg the old lady would not have brought her
daughte