"I didn't know father had received a letter from Godfrey," said Ruth,
shading her face from the lamp, and lifting to Leonard a smile which
implied that it would have been but fair for him to have told her.

"It came the day before Arthur went away," replied Leonard, and Ruth
reluctantly chose a new topic.

They rarely had an evening together thus, and with a soft rain falling
at the open windows they sat and talked on many themes in what was to
them a very talkative way. When something brought up the subject of the
late noted trial, Ruth asked her brother how it had first come to him to
suspect so unsuspected a man.

His reply was tardy. "Partly," he said, and mused while he spoke,
"because I am so unsuspected a man myself."

He looked up with a smile, half play, half pain. "I know what the mind
of an unsuspected man is capable of--under pressure."

The questioner looked on him with fond faith, and then, dropping her
eyes to her needlework, said, "That wasn't all that prompted you, was
it?"

"No," replied the brother, again musing. "I had noticed the singular
value of wanton guesswork."

"I thought so," said the sister. Her needle flagged and stopped, and
each knew the other's mind was on the implacable divinations of one
morbid soul.