joy, “that we have recovered the whole money!”
“Don’t congratulate me, anybody!” exclaimed my aunt. “How so, sir?”
“You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?” said Traddles.
“Of course I did,” said my aunt, “and was therefore easily silenced. Agnes, not a word!”
“And indeed,” said Traddles, “it was sold, by virtue of the power of management he held from you; but I needn’t say by whom sold, or on whose actual signature. It was afterwards pretended to Mr. Wickfield, by that rascal—and proved, too, by figures—that he had possessed himself of the money (on general instructions, he said) to keep other deficiencies and difficulties from the light. Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and helpless in his hands as to pay you, afterwards, several sums of interest on a pretended principal which he knew did not exist, made himself, unhappily, a party to the fraud.”