You have asked me to tell you, Sir, who has taken your money," I went
on. "If you insist on my giving you an answer"--

"I do insist," he said, faintly. "Who has taken it?"

"Your wife has taken it," I said, very quietly, and very positively at
the same time.

He jumped out of the chair as if I had put a knife into him, and struck
his fist on the table, so heavily that the wood cracked again.

"Steady, Sir," says I. "Flying into a passion won't help you to the
truth."

"It's a lie!" says he, with another smack of his fist on the table,--"a
base, vile, infamous lie! How dare you"--

He stopped, and fell back into the chair again, looked about him in a
bewildered way, and ended by bursting out crying.

"When your better sense comes back to you, Sir," says I, "I am sure you
will be gentleman enough to make me an apology for the language you have
just used. In the mean time, please to listen, if you can, to a word of
explanation. Mr. Sharpin has sent in a report to our Inspector, of the
most irregular and ridiculous kind; setting down, not only all his own
foolish doings and sayings, but the doings and sayings of Mrs. Yatman as
well. In most cases, such a document would have been fit only for the
waste-paper basket; but, in this particular case, it so happens that Mr.
Sharpin's budget of nonsense leads to a certain conclusion which the
simpleton of a writer has been quite innocent of suspecting from the
beginning to the end. Of that conclusion I am so sure, that I will
forfeit my place, if it does not turn out that Mrs. Yatman has been
practising upon the folly and conceit of this young man, and that she
has tried to shield herself from discovery by purposely encouraging him
to suspect the wrong persons. I tell you that confidently; and I will
even go farther. I will undertake to give a decided opinion as to why
Mrs. Yatman took the money, and what she has done with it, or with a
part of it. Nobody can look at that lady, Sir, without being struck by
the great taste and beauty of her dress"----

As I said those last words, the poor man seemed to find his powers of
speech again. He cut me short directly, as haughtily as if he had been
a duke instead of a stationer. "Try some other means of justifying your
vile calumny against my wife," says he. "Her milliner's bill, for the
past year, is on my file of receipted accounts, at this moment."

"Excuse me, Sir," says I, "but that proves nothing. Milliners, I must
tell you