A Hardy Norseman by Edna Lyall

If Roy had seemed unsympathetic as they drove home it was not because he did not feel keenly. He was indeed afraid to show how keenly he felt, and he would have given almost anything to have been able honestly to say that he, too, believed in some unexplained mystery which should entirely free his friend from reproach. But he could not honestly believe in such a thing-it would have been as easy to him to believe in the existence of fairies and hobgoblins. Since no such thing as magic existed, and since Darnell had never been an assistant of Maskelyne and Cooke, he could not believe that he had anything to do with the five-pound note. Assuredly no one but Frithiof could have taken it out of the till and carefully pinned it to the lining of his waistcoat pocket. The more he thought over the details of the story, the more irrational seemed his sister's blind faith. And yet his longing to share in her views chafed and irritated him as he realized the impossibility.

His mind was far too much engrossed to notice Cecil much, and that, perhaps, was a good thing, for just then in her great dejection any ordinarily acute observer could not have failed to read her story. But Roy, full of passionate love for Sigrid, and of hot indignation with James Horner for having been the instrument of bringing about all this trouble, was little likely to observe other people.