Mr. Parmiter was still, but the lady spoke.
"Are you not forgetting that Mr. Parmiter is my solicitor, and that a solicitor cannot give evidence against his own client? I am sorry to have to seem to teach you law, Mr. Wilkes. Rodney, have you a match? If so, will you please burn these?"
She held out the fragments of the letter. Mr. Wilkes made a final attempt at salvage.
"Miss Patterson, I implore you to give me those scraps of paper. It may still not be too late to piece them together, and so save you from consequences of whose gravity you have no notion."
Once more the young gentleman interposed.
"Remove your hand from my shoulder, sir! You are only making your position every moment more and more serious!"
"To use a phrase of which you seem to be rather fond, Mr. Wilkes, in a legal sense, I believe this is my room. I must ask you to leave it at once."
"Not before you have given me those scraps of paper, Miss Patterson!"
"If you won't go, I shall reluctantly have to ask Mr. Elmore to put you out, and, in doing so, to use no more violence than is necessary."
"I entreat you, Miss Patterson, to accept sound advice, and to do something which may permit of my repairing the mischief you have caused. Give me those scraps of paper."
"Rodney, will you please put Mr. Wilkes out? But please don't hurt him!"
The young man put the lawyer out, doing him no actual bodily hurt. He conducted him through the outer office to the landing, then addressed the astonished Andrews.
"Andrews, this is Mr. Stephen Wilkes; I believe you know him. Give instructions that, under no pretext, is he to be admitted to these offices again. I shall look to you to see that those instructions are carried out. Good-day, sir."
Shutting the door in the lawyer's face, he audibly turned the key on the inner side.
"Now, Andrews, would you mind coming into the other room?"
Miss Patterson greeted her cousin with the request she had already made. She still had the fragments of the letter between her fingers.
"How about that match, Rodney? Please burn these."
He made a little bonfire of them on the hearth, while she went on:
"I don't suppose you will be very eager now to attend my father's funeral in the capacity of mourner."
"I am not. I would much rather not go at all, if you will pardon the abstention."