“None.”
“Why should he not take your mother with him?”
“I do not know.”
“Why should he conceal his address?”
“I do not know.”
“Why should he allow your mother to die and be buried without coming back?”
“I do not know.”
“My dear sir,” said I, “if I may speak with the frankness of a professional adviser, I should say that it is very clear that your father had the strongest reasons for keeping out of the country, and that, if nothing has been proved against him, he at least thought that something might be, and refused to put himself within the power of the law. Surely that must be obvious, for in what other possible way can the facts be explained?”
My companion did not take my suggestion in good part.
“You had not the advantage of knowing my father, Mr. Alder,” he said, coldly. “I was only a boy when he left us, but I shall always look upon him as my ideal man. His only fault was that he was too sensitive and too unselfish. That any one should lose money through him would cut him to the heart. His sense of honour was most acute, and any theory of his disappearance which conflicts with that is a mistaken one.”