Thomas Wingfold. Volume III by George MacDonald

But although such was George Bascombe's judgment of Leopold, and / such his conduct of his affair, he could not prevent the recurrent / intrusion of the flickering doubt which had showed itself when first / he listened to the story. Amid all the wildness of the tale there / was yet a certain air, not merely of truthfulness in the / narrator -- that was not to be questioned -- but of verisimilitude in / the narration, which had its effect, although it gave rise to no / conscious exercise of discriminating or ponderating faculty. / Leopold's air of conviction also, although of course that might well / accompany the merest invention rooted in madness, yet had its force, / persistently as George pooh-poohed it -- which he did the more / strenuously from the intense, even morbid abhorrence of his nature / to being taken in, and having to confess himself of unstable / intellectual equilibrium. Possibly this was not the only kind of / thing in which the sensitiveness of a vanity he would himself have / disowned, had rendered him unfit for perceiving the truth. Nor do I / know how much there may be to choose between the two shames -- that of / accepting what is untrue, and that of refusing what is true.

The second time he listened to Leopold's continuous narrative, the / doubt returned with more clearness and less flicker: there was such / a thing as being over-wise: might he not be taking himself in with / his own incredulity? Ought he not to apply some test? And did / Leopold's story offer any means of doing so? -- One thing, he then / found, had been dimly haunting his thoughts ever since he heard it: / Leopold affirmed that he had thrown his cloak and mask down an old / pit-shaft, close by the place of murder: if there was such a shaft, / could it be searched? -- Recurring doubt at length so wrought upon his / mind, that he resolved to make his holiday excursion to that / neighbourhood, and there endeavour to gain what assurance of any / sort might be to be had. What end beyond his own possible / satisfaction the inquiry was to answer he did not ask himself. The / restless spirit of the detective, so often conjoined with / indifference to what is in its own nature true, was at work in / him -- but that was not all: he must know the very facts, if possible, / of whatever concerned Helen. I shall not follow his proceedings / closely: it is with their reaction upon Leopold that I have to do.