was torturing and absurd as
to her mother's papers. She had been delirious that evening, and, what
was still more important, she was actually very hazy now as to what she
had seen and read of the contents of that box.

"I can't remember if that's true," she could honestly say to herself
when some fact of the horrible story came forward and claimed attention.
Once she caught herself thinking how very common it was for people to
forget entirely what had happened just before or during an illness. For
instance, Sir David Bright had never been able to remember what happened
on the day on which Madame Danterre declared he had married her. But how
did Molly know that? And suddenly she said to herself that she could not
remember; perhaps she had fancied that, too.

At another time she began almost to think that she had imagined the
black box altogether. Was it square or oblong? and how shallow was it?
Sometimes while she was ill she had seen a black box as big as a house;
sometimes it was a little tiny cash box.

Meanwhile, under cover of so many uncertainties, the other theory was
getting a firm footing. It was simply that the fact of the will being
sent to her mother was undoubted proof of Sir David's having repented of
having made it. If Sir David had not sent her this will, who had? It was
absurd and romantic to suppose that her mother had carried on an
intrigue in South Africa in order to get possession of this will. That
might have done in a chapter of Dumas, or have been imagined in
delirium, but it was not possible in real life. The only puzzle was--and
the theory must be able to meet all the facts of the case--why had he
not destroyed the will himself? The probability was that he had not been
able to do so at the last moment. When dying he must have repented of
the last will just too late to destroy it. She could quite imagine his
asking a friend, almost with his last words, to send Madame Danterre the
papers. It would look more natural than his asking the friend to destroy
them. And then the officer would have addressed the papers, of course
not reading them. And thus the theory comfortably wrapped up another
fact, namely, that the registered envelope had not been addressed by the
hand that had written its contents. Finally, all that the theory did for
the will, it did also for the letter to Rose, for the two things
evidently stood or fell together. So the theories grew and prospered
without interfering with each ot