"She is at the opera, I fancy; very well, no doubt." And then she sat down and imparted her suspicions—just an allusion to them—that her poor sister was the culprit.
"Grace," he whispered, "I don't mind telling you that the same fear haunted me, and I spoke to her. She indignantly denied it."
"Two of the notes have been traced," murmured Grace.
"Traced!"
"Paid away by Adela at Lady Sanely's."
There was a dead silence. Lady Grace Chenevix did not raise her eyelids, for she felt keenly the pain of avowal. An ominous shade of despair overspread his face.
"Grace, Grace," he broke forth in anguish, "what is it you are saying?"
"One of them, for fifty pounds, came into my father's hands today, and he has traced it back to Adela," continued Grace, striving to keep down the signs of her pain. "Another of them she paid the same evening to the Dowager Beck. Papa knows of this; he found it out today. What inference can we draw but that Adela—— You know what I would say."
"Could she descend to this?" he groaned. "To be a party with Charles Cleveland in——"
"Charles was no party to it," interrupted Grace, warmly; "he must have been her instrument, nothing more. Rely upon that. Whatever may be his follies, he is the soul of honour. And it must be from some chivalrous sense of honour, of noblesse oblige, you understand, that he is continuing to shield her now the matter has come out. What is to be done? Charles Cleveland must not be tried as a felon."