"Exactly what I heard. Of course the letters were written in ignorance
of what was impending."
"Colin, they were never written at all by Edward! He denied
all knowledge of them. Alison saw Dr. Long's, most ingeniously
managed--foreign paper and all--but she could swear to the forgery--"
"You suspect this Maddox?"
"Most strongly! He knew the state of the business; Edward did not. And
he had a correspondence that would have enabled so ingenious a person
easily to imitate Edward's letters. I do not wonder at their having been
taken in; but how Julia--how Harry Beauchamp could believe--what they do
believe. Oh, Colin! it will not do to think about it!"
"Oh, that I had been at home! Were no measures taken?"
"Alas! alas! we urged Edward to come home and clear himself; but that
poor little wife of his was terrified beyond measure, imagined prisons
and trials. She was unable to move, and he could not leave her; she
took from him an unhappy promise not to put himself in what she fancied
danger from the law, and then died, leaving him a baby that did not live
a day. He was too broken-hearted to care for vindicating himself, and no
one-no one would do it for him!"
Colonel Keith frowned and clenched the hand that lay in his grasp till
it was absolute pain, but pain that was a relief to feel. "Madness,
madness!" he said. "Miserable! But how was it at home--? Did this Maddox
stand his ground?"
"Yes, if he had fled, all would have been clear, but he doctored the
accounts his own way, and quite satisfied Dr. Long and Harry. He showed
Edward's receipt for the £6000 that had been advanced, and besides,
there was a large sum not accounted for, which was, of course, supposed
to have been invested abroad by Edward--some said gambled away--as if he
had not had a regular hatred of all sorts of games."
"Edward with his head in the clouds! One notion is as likely as the
other.--Then absolutely nothing was done!"
"Nothing! The bankruptcy was declared, the whole affair broken up; and
certainly if every one had not known Edward to be the most heedless of
men, the confusion would have justified them in thinking him a dishonest
one. Things had been done in his name by Maddox that might have made a
stranger think him guilty of the rest, but to those who had ever known
his abstraction, and far more his real honour and uprightness, nothing
could have been plainer."
"It all turned upon his absence."
"Yes, he must have borne the brunt of what had been done in his name,
I know; that would have been bad enough, but in a court of justice, his
whole character would have been shown, and besides, a prosecution for
forgery of his receipt would have shown what Maddox was, sufficiently to
exculpate him."