Master Gridley waited long and patiently for any answer she might have the force to make. As she made none, he took upon himself to settle the whole matter without further torture of his helpless victim.
"This package must go into the hands of the parties who had the settlement of the estate of the late Malachi Withers. Mr. Penhallow is the survivor of the two gentlemen to whom that business was intrusted.--How long is Mr. William Murray Bradshaw like to be away?"
"Perhaps a few days,--perhaps weeks,--and then he will come back and kill me,--or--or--worse! Don't take that paper, Mr. Gridley,--he isn't like you; you wouldn't--but he would--he would send me to everlasting misery to gain his own end, or to save himself. And yet he is n't every way bad, and if he did marry Myrtle she 'd think there never was such a man,--for he can talk her heart out of her, and the wicked in him lies very deep and won't ever come out, perhaps, if the world goes right with him." The last part of this sentence showed how Cynthia talked with her own conscience; all her mental and moral machinery lay open before the calm eyes of Master Byles Gridley.
His thoughts wandered a moment from the business before him; he had just got a new study of human nature, which in spite of himself would be shaping itself into an axiom for an imagined new edition of "Thoughts on the Universe,"--something like this,--_The greatest saint may be a sinner that never got down to "hard pan."_--It was not the time to be framing axioms.
"Poh! poh!" he said to himself; "what are you about, making phrases, when you have got a piece of work like this in hand?" Then to Cynthia, with great gentleness and kindness of manner: "Have no fear about any consequences to yourself. Mr. Penhallow must see that paper,--I mean those papers. You shall not be a loser nor a sufferer if you do your duty now in these premises."
Master Gridley, treating her, as far as circumstances permitted, like a gentleman, had shown no intention of taking the papers either stealthily or violently. It must be with her consent. He had laid the package down upon the table, waiting for her to give him leave to take it. But just as he spoke these last words, Cynthia, whose eye had been glancing furtively at it while he was thinking out his axiom, and taking her bearings to it pretty carefully, stretched her hand out, and, seizing the package, thrust it into the sanctuary of her bosom.