"It is my habit to leave letters on the table every day. They have never been touched or tampered with, so far as I know, until this afternoon."
"You cannot be sure of that. But what shall you do in the matter now?"
"I don't know what to do; it is the sort of thing that causes me to feel at a nonplus. Were I to have an officer in the house to watch, as you suggest, it might prove useless."
"Have you a suspicion of any one in particular?" she abruptly asked. And by this time Mr. Dexter had grown interested in the conversation, and was listening as closely as I.
"Not the slightest. Neither can you have, I suppose."
Mrs. Penn was silent.
"Have you?" repeated he, thinking her manner peculiar.
"I would rather not answer the question, Mr. Chandos; because it would inevitably be followed by another."
"Which is equivalent to admitting that your suspicions are directed to some one in particular," he returned, with awakened interest. "Why should you object to avow it?"
"Well, it is so," she replied. "I do think that all the circumstances—taking one loss, one disagreeable event with another—do tend to point suspicion to a certain quarter. But I may be wrong."