He was disposed, for
the first time, to doubt whether, in this case, he had not been a little
hasty and hard in his judgment on another man. Obenreizer's surprise and
regret, on hearing the news from Neuchatel, bore the plainest marks of
being honestly felt--not politely assumed for the occasion. With
troubles of his own to encounter, suffering, to all appearance, from the
first insidious attack of a serious illness, he had looked and spoken
like a man who really deplored the disaster that had fallen on his
friend. Hitherto Vendale had tried vainly to alter his first opinion of
Marguerite's guardian, for Marguerite's sake. All the generous instincts
in his nature now combined together and shook the evidence which had
seemed unanswerable up to this time. "Who knows?" he thought. "I may
have read that man's face wrongly, after all."
The time passed--the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went. It
was again the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm;
and again the answer appeared on his desk with the other letters of the
day:
"Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defresnier, has been called away, by
urgent business, to Milan. In his absence (and with his full
concurrence and authority), I now write to you again on the subject of
the missing five hundred pounds.
"Your discovery that the forged receipt is executed upon one of our
numbered and printed forms has caused inexpressible surprise and
distress to my partner and to myself.
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