The old gentleman looked cold and was decidedly cross.
“Come away! Come along!” said he. “Mrs. Lansdowne will give us a lift on her way home. I don’t know what you want to go hanging about the place for a minute longer than you need. I should think you were glad to get this gruesome affair done with. Come along!”
And Miss Theodora dutifully allowed him to lead her away.
The cold drive home of George Claris and his niece began in silence. They were already in sight of the little group of buildings of which the Blue Lion was the principal, when the girl, turning suddenly to her uncle, asked:
“Uncle George, what is the matter? Why are you different, different to me?”
There was a pause. A struggle was going on in the man’s breast, a struggle pitifully keen, between the love he had always borne toward his Nell and the attacks of doubt and suspicion. It was in a husky, unnatural voice that he presently replied, parrying the question:
“Different! How different?”
“You know, you know,” Nell whispered back.
George Claris looked at her. And for a minute the old trust came back into his heart, and he told himself that he was a fool, a miserable old fool, to allow a doubt of her absolute goodness and truth to enter his mind. And then again the ugly thoughts which had begun to darken his mind, subtly instilled by the doubt and suspicion in all the minds around him, clouded over him once more. He could not give her an open answer, although he felt that it would have been better if he could have done so. He heaved a big sigh, and answered without looking.
“Ah, well, my girl, it’s not so easy to be lively and cheerful with such things as them,” and he vaguely indicated the recent occurrence, jerking his whip back in the direction of Stroan, “happening under one’s very windows, almost.”