“Not so much as you fancy,” broke he in. “She was a long time in that private asylum up at Brompton, and then down in Staffordshire; altogether, she must have passed five-and-twenty or thirty years in a rather restricted circle.”
“Mad! Was she mad?”
“Not what one would call mad, but queer. They were all queer. Hargrave, the second brother, was the fellow that made that shindy in the Mauritius, and our friend Shalley isn't a conjuror. And we thought you were larking the old lady, I assure you we did.”
“'We' were once more mistaken, then,” said I, sneer-ingly.
“We all said, too, at the time, that Doubleton had been 'let in.' He gave you a good round sum for expenses on the road, did n't he, and you sent it all back to him.”
“Every shilling of it”
“So he told us, and that was what puzzled us more than all the rest. Why did you give up the money?”
“Simply, sir, because it was not mine.”
“Yes, yes, to be sure, I know that; but I mean, what suggested the restitution?”
“Really, sir, your question leads me to suppose that the 'we' so often referred to are not eminently remarkable for integrity.”