for suspecting Mr. Grahame. His manner to-day confirms my suspicion. I am deeply grieved that it should be so, on your wife's account."
"You had need be sorry for her. Why, Bothwell is like a brother to her. It would break her heart," said Wyllard, strongly agitated.
He had risen from the table, and was walking slowly up and down the room, between the windows opening wide upon the gray evening sky, and the warm lamplight within. Joseph Distin could not see his face, but he could see that he was strongly moved.
"My dear fellow, let us hope that Mrs. Wyllard will never know anything about this suspicion of mine," said Distin soothingly. "I have—so far—not one scrap of evidence against Mr. Grahame; except the evidence of looks and manner, and the one fact of his refusal to say what he was doing in Plymouth the day of the girl's death. There is nothing in all that to bring a man to the gallows. I may have my own ideas about this mystery, and Mr. Heathcote may have pretty much the same notion, but there is nothing to touch your wife's cousin so far. I shall go back to town, and try to forget the whole matter. All you have to do is to keep your own counsel, and take care that Mrs. Wyllard knows nothing of what has passed in strictest confidence between you and me."
"I would not have her know it for worlds. It would break her heart; it might kill her. Women cannot bear such shocks. And to think that a man can be suspected of a crime on such grounds—suspected by you, a student of crime and criminals—because of a moody manner, a refusal to answer a question! The whole thing seems too absurd for belief."
"Say that the thing is absurd, and that for once in his life Joe Distin has made a fool of himself. Take your wife to Aix-les-Bains—or to Biarritz—"
Julian Wyllard started at that last word as if he had been stung.
"What the deuce is the matter with you, or with Biarritz?" asked Distin sharply.
"Nothing. My mind was wandering, that's all. You were saying—"
"That you had better forget all that has passed between us to-night—forget the death of that girl—make a clean slate. Take your wife to some foreign watering-place, the brightest and gayest you can find. And let Bothwell Grahame dree his weird as best he may. The catastrophe on the railway will be forgotten in a week."
"I doubt it. We have not much to think about at Bodmin, and we exaggerate all our molehills into mountains. That girl's death will be the talk of the town for the next six months."
