"There wasn't the slightest danger of that—"
"He tried to put the suspicion on you, and to bring the disgrace on your wife and children."
"Well, my dear, we agreed to forget all that long ago. And I don't think—I never thought—that Tedham would have let the suspicion rest on me. He merely wanted to give it that turn, when the investigation began, so as to gain time to get out to Canada."
My wife looked at me with a glance in which I saw tender affection dangerously near contempt. "You are a very forgiving man, Basil," she said, and I looked down sheepishly. "Well, at any rate, you have had the sense not to mix yourself up in his business. Did he pretend that he came straight to you, as soon as he got out? I suppose he wanted you to believe that he appealed to you before he tried anybody else."
"Yes, he stopped at the Reciprocity office to ask for my address, and after he had visited the cemetery he came on out here. And, if you must know, I think Tedham is still the old Tedham. Put him behind a good horse, with a pocketful of some one else's money, in a handsome suit of clothes, and a game-and-fish dinner at Tafft's in immediate prospect, and you couldn't see any difference between the Tedham of to-day and the Tedham of ten years ago, except that the actual Tedham is clean-shaved and wears his hair cut rather close."
"Basil!"
"Why do you object to the fact? Did you imagine he had changed inwardly?"
"He must have suffered."
"But does suffering change people? I doubt it. Certain material accessories of Tedham's have changed. But why should that change Tedham? Of course, he has suffered, and he suffers still. He threw out some hints of what he had been through that would have broken my heart if I hadn't hardened it against him. And he loves his daughter still, and he wants to see her, poor wretch."
"I suppose he does!" sighed my wife.