"You are sure! No one?"
"It is the strangest thing!" and Dr. Bryant sighed heavily. "I would have trusted her with any amount of uncounted gold . . . I do not, in fact, believe it yet."
"She doesn't seem able to do much in the way of clearing herself."
"That is the perplexity. If she denied it, I should not feel a moment's doubt."
"I should!" murmured Theodosia, loud enough to be heard.
The separation between Lettice and her husband, for which she had craved, seemed now to lie within a measurable distance. Yet Theodosia could not feel happy. A dark shadow hung over her, the fruit of her own ill-doing. Conscience worked uneasily, and the dread of detection was a haunting companion.
Lettice's non-denial of the deed puzzled Theodosia, even more than it puzzled her husband, because she knew, as he did not, that it could not be due to guilt. Not until late that night did a clue to the mystery occur to her mind, in the shape of a suggestion. Did Lettice fear to direct suspicion towards Felix by diverting it from herself?
"If that is it, I am safe," thought Theodosia. "Lettice will never let out that he was left alone in the room."
Was she not rather in deadly peril?
Lettice was down early next morning, somewhat unexpectedly, since the Doctor had sent word that she might stay in bed to breakfast. The advice was not followed. She looked unusually pale, and her eyes were heavy with sleeplessness: but Dr. Bryant was strongly impressed at first sight with the peaceful calm of those brown eyes. It seemed to him that she must have come straight from Communion with the unseen world, with the Divine Lord, to Whom she was used to refer all her difficulties. Dr. Bryant, albeit a man of few words on religious subjects, knew what such communion meant . . . That the face of a thief! Impossible. For ten minutes he had not a shadow of doubt as to her innocence.