The Secret of the Tower by Antonio Hope

Old Mr. Naylor called on Mary two or three days later -- at an hour when, as he well knew, Cynthia was at his own house -- in order to hear the story. There were parts of it which she could not describe fully for lack of knowledge -- the enterprise of Mike and Big Neddy, for example; but all that she knew she told frankly, and did not scruple to invoke her imagination to paint Beaumaroy's position, with its difficulties, demands, obligations -- and temptations. He heard her with close attention, evidently amused, and watching her animated face with a keen and watchful pleasure.

"Surprising!" he said at the end, rubbing his hands together. "That's to say, not in itself particularly surprising. Just a queer little happening; one would think nothing of it if one read it in the newspaper! Things are always so much more surprising when they happen down one's own street, or within a few minutes' walk of one's garden wall -- and when one actually knows the people involved in them. Still I was always inclined to agree with Dr. Irechester that there was something out of the common about old Saffron and our friend Beaumaroy."