CHAPTER XX.
There was just one ray of consolation for Clifford King in the misfortune which had befallen Nell. She seemed to him, in spite of the trembling of her limbs and the pallor of her face, to be more relieved than depressed by the arrival of the police.
It was with perfect self-possession that she turned to the sergeant and said:
“May I speak to Mr. King alone before I go?”
“Certainly, Miss. Perhaps you would like to walk as far as Beach with Mr. King, and we will have a cab waiting there to take you on to Stroan.”
This course was agreed upon, and Nell and Clifford left the house together. They walked in perfect silence until they had passed through the unlovely back streets of the town, and had reached the contiguous village of St. Mary’s, with its gray old church on the high ground. They stopped for a moment in the shadow of the tall tower. Clifford looked at the girl by his side, and was amazed to see that the gloom which had hung over her on his arrival had melted away.
“Why, Nell,” said he, with a puzzled smile on his own face, “I told you that you would soon be your own self again, but I didn’t guess how quickly the transformation would take place.”
Her face clouded a little, but the sigh she gave was one of more relief than pain.
“Can you imagine what it would be like,” she asked, gravely, as they turned and continued their walk down the crooked village street, “to live for months in perplexity and dread of you didn’t quite know what? And then to find yourself groping your way to a dreadful, shameful secret, which was bound to bring misery and disgrace upon yourself and everybody you cared about? Supposing that you were presently forced to confess everything—forced to do it, mind—wouldn’t it be a relief to you, even if you brought upon yourself a dreadful punishment?”
Clifford was silent. He was alarmed by her words, indicating as they did that she was involved in the horrible story; yet he did not wish to acquiesce in the idea of her guilt, or even in the notion of her having been a passive agent in the tragedy.