"Forgive me!" he repeated. "You have been cruelly wronged."
"You couldn't know! You couldn't tell. It was not your fault. I have nothing to forgive."
"You have much! I ought to have been sure! The marvel to me now is—how I could ever have thought it possible. My own credulity amazes me."
His grieved look wandered to the brother, and Felix said promptly, "The other would have seemed much more impossible."
"True!" Dr. Bryant sighed heavily. "The least of the pain is that our little lad is safe at Home!"
"Don't mind about me! Don't think of that again," entreated Lettice. "You have been so good, so dear and good to me always. And if I had spoken out at first—"
"That was always a mystery! I never could understand your silence. Why not have denied it from the beginning?"
Lettice was dumb, and Felix spoke for her. "She thought she might divert suspicion upon me. I was in the room, also, with the bank-note."
"I see!—" with a flash of understanding. "But, no! How could that affect you? You were not in the room alone?"
"Yes,—alone!"