"So! And does his confession end there?"
"It does. But surely no sane person can doubt that the hand which stole the jewels was guilty of the far graver crime!"
"And yet there might be found people, whether sane or otherwise, to doubt the accuracy of such an assumption."
A coldly malignant gleam shot from Ormsby's porcine eyes. "I have not forgotten, Drelincourt, how you stood up for the fellow twenty years ago. Had it not been for your evidence about the locket, in all probability he would have been convicted then. But stand up for him now, after his own confession! On my soul, Drelincourt, it almost looks as if you knew more about the affair than you choose to tell!"
Mrs. Drelincourt let her soft cheek rest for a moment like a caress against her husband's hand, which was still grasping the back of her chair.
"Ormsby, I am one of those men, too few in number, I am sorry to think, who decline to accept assumptions in lieu of facts. You say this fellow has confessed to the robbery. Well and good; let him be punished for it. But to assume that he is, therefore, and as if it were a matter of course, guilty of the more heinous crime seems to me monstrous in the extreme."
"If you were a man of the world, Drelincourt, instead of being the student and recluse you are, you wouldn't talk such rot--for I can call it by no other name. So convinced are I and my brother magistrates of Gumley's guilt that we have unanimously made up our minds to commit him to the next assizes on the double charge of robbery and murder."
"Iv that case, there's nothing more to be said," remarked Drelincourt with a shrug, as he turned away.
"My errand is discharged; I will no longer inrtrude," said Ormsby.
He made a sweeping, old fashioned bow, and then marched out, his nose in the air, and the color in his cheeks a shade deeper than when he had entered the room. Wicks shut the door behind him, and the next moment the first dinner bell sounded.