“Bully for you, padre! Put me down for the same to start, and I’ll be able to raise as much again, or more in a week or two. I’d give every dollar, every red cent I have to help clear old Roger.”
He exchanged a swift glance with Winnie, who nodded delighted approval. She knew perfectly well that his impulsive offer meant that their own wedding might have to be delayed perhaps for years, but that weighed as nothing with Roger’s life and liberty in the opposite scale.
“George and I too,” she said. “I’ve told Grace so already. I don’t know how much yet, Mr. Iverson, but I’ve lots of engagements for Christmas and after—good ones, too—so I shall be quite rich.”
The vicar beamed round at them all and rubbed the shining little bald circle on his crown in a way he had when he was pleased. That bald patch, set round with curly, iron-grey hair, was one of his innocent little vanities. It was perfectly natural, but it did look so like a real tonsure!
“Now isn’t that capital! Nearly two thousand pounds in less than five minutes. Lots to go on with; and we shall get the rest long before it’s wanted. ‘Hope for the best and prepare to meet the worst,’ is an excellent maxim.”
His incorrigible optimism was infectious; it cheered them all as no amount of conventional and lugubrious sympathy could have done; and his acceptance of Roger’s innocence as a fact that need not even be discussed, and would assuredly be established, was an unspeakable comfort to Grace, whose loyal and sensitive soul had been so cruelly tortured by the doubt of others, and by her own mother’s attitude above all.
He declared his conviction that the first theory advanced and then abandoned was the right one: that the deed had been committed by some casual miscreant, who would yet be discovered.
Austin said nothing of his own newer theory, to the secret surprise of both Winnie and Grace, who, however, followed his example, supposing he thought it best to keep silence for the present, even among themselves.
“How curious that Mr. Cacciola should be mixed up with it all, in a way,” remarked the vicar.
“Do you know him, sir?” asked Austin quickly.