“Listen to me,” he said.  “At the first consultation I had with Sharon he gave this advice to Mr. Troy and to me.  He said, ’Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly fall.’  Those words, taken with the questions he had asked before he pronounced his opinion, struck through me as if he had struck me with a knife.  I instantly suspected Lady Lydiard’s nephew.  Wait!  From that time to this I have said nothing of my suspicion to any living soul.  I knew in my own heart that it took its rise in the inveterate dislike that I have always felt for Mr. Sweetsir, and I distrusted it accordingly.  But I went back to Sharon, for all that, and put the case into his hands.  His investigations informed me that Mr. Sweetsir owed ‘debts of honor’ (as gentlemen call them), incurred through lost bets, to a large number of persons, and among them a bet of five hundred pounds lost to Mr. Hardyman.  Further inquiries showed that Mr. Hardyman had taken the lead in declaring that he would post Mr. Sweetsir as a defaulter, and have him turned out of his clubs, and turned out of the betting-ring.  Ruin stared him in the face if he failed to pay his debt to Mr. Hardyman on the last day left to him—­the day after the note was lost.  On that very morning, Lady Lydiard, speaking to me of her nephew’s visit to her, said, ’If I had given him an opportunity of speaking, Felix would have borrowed money of me; I saw it in his face.’  One moment more, Isabel.  I am not only certain that Mr. Sweetsir took the five-hundred pound note out of the open letter, I am firmly persuaded that he is the man who told Lord Rotherfield of the circumstances under which you left Lady Lydiard’s house.  Your marriage to Mr. Hardyman might have put you in a position to detect the theft.  You, not I, might, in that case, have discovered from your husband that the stolen note was the note with which Mr. Sweetsir paid his debt.  He came here, you may depend on it, to make sure that he had succeeded in destroying your prospects.  A more depraved villain at heart than that man never swung from a gallows!”

He checked himself at those words.  The shock of the disclosure, the passion and vehemence with which he spoke, overwhelmed Isabel.  She trembled like a frightened child.

While he was still trying to soothe and reassure her, a low whining made itself heard at her feet.  They looked down, and saw Tommie.  Finding himself noticed at last, he expressed his sense of relief by a bark.  Something dropped out of his mouth.  As Moody stooped to pick it up, the dog ran to Isabel and pushed his head against her feet, as his way was when he expected to have the handkerchief thrown over him, preparatory to one of those games at hide-and-seek which have been already mentioned.  Isabel put out her hand to caress him, when she was stopped by a cry from Moody.  It was his turn to tremble now.  His voice faltered as he said the words, “The dog has found the pocketbook!”