"He told me that he and you had once been friends," she said in a half-whisper.
"And so we were. I believed in the fellow: I had no suspicion that he was a villain, and I let him draw me into things from which I could not extricate myself. I was a fool; and I had to pay for it."
In Sara's inmost heart there arose unbidden a rebellious thought: that others had had to pay for it; not Captain Davenal.
"Did it affect my father's health, this business?" he inquired in a low tone.
"I fear it did," she replied, feeling that she could not avoid the confession. "I am sure it affected him mentally. There was a great change in him from that night."
Captain Davenal folded the papers slowly, and pushed them into his waistcoat pocket in his usual careless fashion. "What a fool I was!" he muttered; "and what a rogue was that other!"
"Are they safe there, Edward?"
"Safe enough until I get home. They will be burnt then, except this final receipt. Oh, if my father had but lived! I could at least have repaid him his pecuniary lose. It took all he left behind him I suppose, to satisfy it?"
"Yes; all."
"He told me he feared it would, or nearly all, in the letter he wrote me when he was dying. Did things realise well?"