"So far as people's recollection serves, Mrs. Toynbee mentioned simply that the bureau had been removed to your morning-room: Miss Winter's morning-room. Now, how should a common thief know which was Miss Winter's morning-room? It is only since the Squire died and your return that you have made it such."
"And altogether, taking one thing with another, I feel inclined to think it might have been no common thief who took them."
Ella lifted her eyes quickly. "Have you any suspicions?--of any one in particular?"
"No, my dear; no," he answered slowly; and, she thought, dubiously. "We can but wait. Perhaps Wade may ferret out more particulars."
But, on the same evening, when the Vicar was at home, safe within the four walls of his study, he dropped a word or two that nearly scared his daughter out of her senses. Somehow he had caught up a doubt in his own mind of Philip Cleeve.
"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Maria, in an accent of indignant horror.
"I don't say it was he, Maria; I should be very sorry to do that, or to breathe a syllable of this doubt to any one but you. Still, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that things with regard to Philip do look somewhat suspicious--and Dr. Downes has long thought the same."
"See here, child. In all the mysterious robberies that have taken place, and puzzled us for the past eighteen months, Philip has been present, beginning with Mrs. Carlyon's jewels. He was at her house the evening they were stolen; he was with Downes when he lost his snuff-box--he was with me when my purse disappeared. And, egad, if you come to that," added the Vicar, speaking rather unguardedly in his heat of recollection, "he was with Lennox and Freddy Bootle in London the night they lost things--the one his watch, the other his money."
"This is dreadful," gasped Maria. "Papa, it is not true; it cannot be. I would answer for Philip with my life."
"Very unwise of you, my dear. I have not finished. When that ridiculous woman up yonder"--pointing his finger in the direction of Heron Dyke--"blurted out the story of the jewels at Mrs. Ducie's, and where they were deposited, Philip Cleeve heard her; he was the only man present. I don't accuse him, I say, Maria, but I cannot get these truths out of my mind."