“Not I,” said George, lightly. “Where should I move them to?”
“But no one has power to get into that room, or to penetrate to the safe and the box after it, except you and myself,” urged Mr. Godolphin. “Unless, indeed, you have allowed the keys to stray from your keeping.”
“I have not done that,” answered George. “This seems to be perfectly unaccountable.”
“How came you to tell Averil last night that the bonds had gone to London?”
“Well, the fact is, I did not know what to tell him,” replied George. “When I first missed the bonds, when you were in London——”
“Why did you not let me know then that they were missing?” was the interruption.
“I forgot it when you returned home.”
“But you should not have allowed yourself the possibility of forgetting a thing like that,” remonstrated Thomas. “Upon missing deeds of that value, or in fact of any value however slight, you should have communicated with me the very same hour. George,” he added, after a pause, which George did not break: “I cannot understand how it was that you did not see the necessity of it yourself.”
George Godolphin was running his hand through his hair—in an absent manner, lost in thought; in—as might be conjectured—contemplation of the past time referred to. “How was I to think anything but that you had moved the deeds?” he said.
“At all events, you should have ascertained. Why, George, were I to miss deeds that I believed to be in a given place, I could not rest a night without inquiring after them. I might assume—and there might be every probability for it—that you had moved them; but my sleep would be ruined until I ascertained the fact.”