then been, could have done it, unaided,--by herself?--that she
could have sat down in the still hour of the night, with that old man
on one side and her baby in his cradle on the other, and forged that
will, signatures and all, in such a manner as to have carried her
point for twenty years,--so skilfully as to have baffled lawyers and
jurymen and resisted the eager greed of her cheated kinsman? If so,
was it not all wonderful! Had not she been a woman worthy of wonder!

And then Mr. Furnival's mind, keen and almost unerring at seizing
legal points, went eagerly to work, considering what new evidence
might now be forthcoming. He remembered at once the circumstances of
those two chief witnesses, the clerk who had been so muddle-headed,
and the servant-girl who had been so clear. They had certainly
witnessed some deed, and they had done so on that special day. If
there had been a fraud, if there had been a forgery, it had been so
clever as almost to merit protection! But if there had been such
fraud, the nature of the means by which it might be detected became
plain to the mind of the barrister,--plainer to him without knowledge
of any circumstances than it had done to Mr. Mason after many of such
circumstances had been explained to him.

But it was impossible. So said Mr. Furnival to himself, out
loud;--speaking out loud in order that he might convince himself.
It was impossible, he said again; but he did not convince himself.
Should he ask her? No; it was not on the cards that he should do
that. And perhaps, if a further trial were forthcoming, it might be
better for her sake that he should be ignorant. And then, having
declared again that it was impossible, he rang his bell. "Crabwitz,"
said he, without looking at the man, "just step over to Bedford
Row, with my compliments, and learn what is Mr. Round's present
address;--old Mr. Round, you know."

Mr. Crabwitz stood for a moment or two with the door in his hand, and
Mr. Furnival, going back to his own thoughts, was expecting the man's
departure. "Well," he said, looking up and seeing that his myrmidon
still stood there.

Mr. Crabwitz was not in a very good humour, and had almost made up
his mind to let his master know that such was the case. Looking at
his own general importance in the legal world, and the inestimable
services which he had rendered to Mr. Furnival, he did not think that
that gentleman was treating him well. He had been summoned back to
his dingy c