unworthy suspicion.

"Suspicion?" cried Nancy. "Don't you think to throw dust in my eyes. What
had poor Joe to gain by destroying that there ship? you know very well he
was bribed to do it; and risk his own life. And who bribed him? Who
should bribe him, but the man as owned the ship?"

"Miss Rouse," said Mr. Penfold, "I sympathize with your grief, and make
great allowance; but I will not sit here and hear my worthy employer
blackened with such terrible insinuations. The great house of Wardlaw
bribe a sailor to scuttle their own ship, with Miss Rolleston and one
hundred and sixty thousand pounds' worth of gold on board! Monstrous!
monstrous!"

"Then what did Joe Wylie mean?" replied Nancy. "Says he, 'The poor man
gets all the blame. If I was to tell you who tempted me,' says he, 'you'd
hate me worse.' Then I say, why should she hate him worse? Because it's
her sweetheart tempted mine. I stands to that."

This inference, thus worded, struck Helen as so droll that she turned her
head aside to giggle a little. But old Penfold replied loftily:

"Who cares what a _Wylie_ says against a great old mercantile house of
London City?"

"Very well, Mr. Penfolds," said Nancy, with one great final sob, and
dried her eyes with her apron; and she did it with such an air, they both
saw she was not going to shed another tear about the matter. "Very well;
you are both against me; then I'll say no more. But I know what I know."

"And what do you know?" inquired Helen.

"Time will show," said Nancy, turning suddenly very dogged--"time will
show."

Nothing more was to be got out of her after that; and Helen, soon after,
made her a civil, though stiff, little speech; regretted the pain she had
inadvertently caused her, and went away, leaving Mr. Penfold her address.

On her return home, she entered the whole adventure in her diary. She
made a separate entry to this effect:

_Mysterious._--My letter to Mr. Penfold at the office intercepted.

Wylie hints that he was bribed by Messrs. Wardlaw.

Nancy Rouse suspects that it was Arthur, and says time will show.

As for me, I can neither see why Wylie should scuttle the ship unless he
was bribed by somebody, nor what Arthur or his father could gain by
destroying that ship. This is all as dark as is that more cruel mystery
which alone I care to solve.

CHAPTER LXIII.

NEXT morning, after a sleepless night, Nancy Rouse said to Mr. Penfold,
"Haven't I heard you say as bank-notes