Now, Charles Suffield, though an excellent fellow under the ordinary circumstances of life, was not the man to stand by a friend at a pinch, if the said pinch should chance to be of abnormal tightness. He was one of those good, commonplace souls to whom a public scandal is a thing of terror; wherefore it is not surprising that, when he came to learn that the friend with whom he and his had been upon such intimate terms, had stood his trial for murder of a peculiarly brutal and sordid nature, narrowly escaping conviction, and that only on the cleverness and eloquence of his counsel rather than on the merits of the case, it is not surprising, we repeat, that he should have been, to use his own definition, knocked end ways. He remembered that friend’s studied reticence, instances of which were continually cropping up, and how they had all frequently laughed at and over such; now these all stood accounted for. The whole thing was hideous, hideous beyond words; less the actual murder than the motive—the pitiful, paltry robbery which had prompted it. And to think that the man should have been mixing with them all this while upon intimate terms. And Mona—oh, great Heavens! what amount of mischief might not be done there?
Suffield’s mind, being largely diluted with commonplace, floundered about in a panic, landing its owner in rather a contemptible hole. For in his horror of scandal, and disgust for the reputed crime, he was quite ready to condemn his former friend right out of hand. His reasoning was of the feminine order, “Everybody says so, therefore it must be true.” Curiously enough it was from a feminine mind that a little wholesome common sense was brought to bear upon the question—the mind of his wife, to wit.
“I won’t believe it, even now,” said Grace sturdily; perhaps with a vivid recollection of that awful post-cart journey, the flooded river, and the broken cord. “There may be some explanation, but anyhow it seems rather unfair to put a man on his trial again after he has been acquitted.”
“Where there’s smoke there must be fire,” rejoined Suffield, with proud originality. “And here I’m afraid there must be a great deal more fire than smoke.”
“Still I won’t believe it. Looking at only one side of the question is supposed to be a feminine characteristic. It strikes me that our sex has been libelled.”
“That’s all very well, Grace, but we’ve got to be practical. What about Mona? They are engaged.”
“Not actually.”
“Well, as good as. It amounts to the same thing.”
“I don’t know,” was the reply, more thoughtfully given. “Speak to her yourself about it.”