Ella felt bewildered.
"Surely Captain Lennox did not dare to accuse Philip!"
"Oh dear, no. One day, a few weeks after the loss, when Captain Lennox was in town and calling upon me, he inquired whether the jewels had been found. In talking of the affair, he dropped a word--it was little more than one--which somehow turned my thoughts to Philip. The Captain caught it up again--as if he had let it drop inadvertently, and I did not pursue it. Since then, when I have heard at times how fast Philip was supposed to be spending money at cards, billiards, and such like, that inadvertent word has returned to my mind doubtfully and most disagreeably."
"Do you suppose Captain Lennox wished you to think he accused Philip?"
"No," replied Mrs. Carlyon. "I think he wanted to instil a slight doubt of his possible guilt into my mind, so as to more completely throw any possible suspicion off himself. That is how I fancy it must have been."
"Aunt Gertrude," said Ella, musingly, "I wonder whether it was Captain Lennox who stole Freddy Bootle's watch and chain that same night--and then made out that his own purse was likewise stolen?"
"Little need to wonder! nothing was ever much more sure than that," said Mrs. Carlyon. "The man must have lived by these peculations. And to think what a gentleman he was through it all!"
Conroy came back. And whatever minor elements of disquietude might make themselves felt now and again, there was a certain sweet fulness of content about Ella's life just now, that nothing could seriously affect. She had won the sweetest guerdon a woman can win, and all things else, whether pleasing or displeasing, seemed dwarfed in comparison with that one supreme fact. The more she saw of Conroy, the more she seemed to find in him to love and appreciate. Day by day the choice she had made approved itself more fully to her heart. Even Mrs. Carlyon, now that she was domesticated daily with Conroy, no longer wondered at what she called Ella's infatuation.
It had been arranged that the marriage should take place early in spring. Ella wished to delay the event until the doubt as to the date of her uncle's death, and her own rightful inheritance of the property, should be cleared up; but Mr. Conroy urged that that was no good cause for delay.
"Suppose," she said to him one day, "that after we are married it should be discovered that I am not the true heiress, and Heron Dyke goes from me?"