Dr. Davenal spoke in a quiet tone. Neal, entirely unruffled, save by a slight natural surprise, stepped close up to the table, and looked first at Dr. Davenal and then at the note, which, however, the doctor did not particularly show to him.
"I should think not, sir. There has been no one here to open it."
"That it has been opened I feel certain. Who has been in the room?"
"Not any one, sir," replied Neal. "It has not been entered, so far as I know, since you left it."
There was nothing more to be said, and Dr. Davenal signed to him to go. "I could not accuse him downright," he remarked to his son; "but enough has been said to put him on his guard not to attempt such a thing again."
"He does not look like a guilty man," cried Captain Davenal. "It is next to impossible to suspect Neal of such a thing. He is too--too--I was going to say too much of a gentlemen," broke off Captain Davenal, laughing at his own words. "At any rate, too respectable. His manner betrayed nothing of guilt--nothing of cognisance of the affair. I watched him narrowly."
"True; it did not. He is an innocent man, Ned, or else a finished hypocrite. Of course I may be wrong in my suspicions: honestly to confess it, I have no cause to suspect Neal, beyond the powerful feeling in my mind that he's not to be trusted--a feeling for which I have never been able to account, although it has been upon me since the first day I engaged him."
"We do take up prejudices without knowing why," remarked Captain Davenal. "I suppose sometimes they are false ones.--Here's Neal coming in again."
"I beg your pardon, sir, for having so positively assured you that no one had been in your room," he said, addressing his master. "I remember now that Mr. Cray entered it. I did not think of it, sir, at the moment you questioned me."
"If he did, he'd not touch the letter," said Dr. Davenal.