And yet, as regarded her father, things were going from bad to worse.

Everybody now said that the evidence was so strong against Mr.Crawley as to leave hardly a doubt of his guilt.

Even the ladies in Silverbridge were beginning to give up his cause, acknowledging that the money could not have come rightfully into his hands, and excusing him on the plea of partial insanity.

"He has picked it up and put it by for months, and then thought that it was his own." The ladies of Silverbridge could find nothing better to say for him than that; and when young Mr.Walker remarked that such little mistakes were the customary causes of men being taken to prison, the ladies of Silverbridge did not know how to answer him.
It had come to be their opinion that Mr.Crawley was affected with a partial lunacy, which ought to be forgiven in one to whom the world had been so cruel; and when young Mr.Walker endeavoured to explain to them that a man must be sane altogether or mad altogether, and that Mr.Crawley must, if sane, be locked up as a thief, and if mad, locked up as a madman, they sighed, and were convinced that until the world should have been improved by a new infusion of romance, and a stronger feeling of poetic justice, Mr.John Walker was right.
And the result of this general opinion made its way out to Major Grantly, and made its way, also, to the archdeacon at Plumstead.

As to the major, in giving him his due, it must be explained that the more certain he became of the father's guilt, the more certain also he became of the daughter's merits.