“How could he brave the risk of detection?”
“I don’t know. My head aches, pondering over it. I suppose he concluded that suspicion would fall upon the post-office. It would have done so, but for that seal placed on the letter afterwards. What an unfortunate thing it was, that Roland Yorke mentioned there was money inside the letter in the hearing of Hamish!”
“Did he mention it?” exclaimed Constance.
He said there was a twenty-pound note in the letter, going to the cousin Galloway, and Hamish remarked that he wished it was going into his pocket instead. “I wish” Arthur uttered, in a sort of frenzy, “I had locked the letter up there and then.”
Constance clasped her hands in pain. “I fear he may have been going wrong for some time,” she breathed. “It has come to my knowledge, through Judith, that he sits up for hours night after night, doing something to the books. Arthur,” she shivered, glancing fearfully round, “I hope those accounts are right?”
The doubt thus given utterance to, blanched even the cheeks of Arthur. “Sits up at the books!” he exclaimed.
“He sits up, that is certain; and at the books, as I conclude. He takes them into his room at night. It may only be that he has not time, or does not make time, to go over them in the day. It may be so.”
“I trust it is; I pray it may be. Mind you, Constance, our duty is plain: we must screen him; screen him at any sacrifice to ourselves, for the father and mother’s sake.”
“Sacrifice to you, you ought to say. What were our other light troubles, compared with this? Arthur, will they publicly accuse you?”
“It may come to that; I have been steeling myself all the morning to meet it.”