"Well, no, I haven't heard anything, but I've seen a little, and that, I take it, is about as good."
"Why, yes, it might be better, if it was good for anything at all."
"I do not know how good it is, but my suspicions were excited."
"It is quite an easy matter to have our suspicions excited these exciting times, and on this very exciting subject. There is Mr. Mandeville, has been made to believe that one of the best young men who ever lived, is guilty of stealing his horse first, and his daughter afterward."
"You don't mean to say that he suspects Mr. Duffel of such crimes?"
"No; he judges a thousand times better man than Duffel; for, between you and me, I have my doubts about this Duffel. I have seen him on two different occasions in company with a couple of, to say the least, very suspicious looking characters."
"You don't say so!"
"Yes; and what is more, he was evidently on good terms with them, though he did not appear to wish me to think so, and passed the matter off indifferently. I might not have thought so much of the circumstance were it not for the fact that he does not attend to business at all, and yet lives in a better style and more extravagantly than any other young man in the country. I tell you a man can't live these times, and spend money as he does, without having an income much greater than his."
"Perhaps he is making inroads on his capital."
"That may be, too, though I do not know that it is the case; but I do know that he is absent from home much of the time, occasionally for days together, and nobody can tell where he is."