What were the burdens, heavier even than unjust suspicion, of which she had spoken?
There was no harm in asking.
"But, Grace--Miss Harvey--You will not be angry with me if I ask ?--Why speak so often, as if finding this money depended on you alone?
You wish me to recover it, I know; and if you can counsel me, why not do so?
Why not tell me whom you suspect ?" Her old wild terror returned in an instant.

She stopped short-- "Suspect?
I suspect?
Oh, I have suspected too many already! Suspected till I began to hate my fellow-creatures--hate life itself, when I fancied that I saw 'thief' written on every forehead.

Oh, do not ask me to suspect any more!" Tom was silent.
"Oh," she cried, after a moment's pause.

"Oh, that we were back in those old times I have read of, when they used to put people to the torture to make them confess!" "Why, in Heaven's name ?" "Because then I should have been tortured, and have confessed it, true or false, in the agony, and have been hanged.

They used to hang them then, and put them out of their misery; and I should have been put out of mine, and no one have been blamed but me for ever more." "You forget," said Tom, lost in wonder, "that then I should have blamed you, as well as every one else." "True; yes, it was a foolish faithless word.