Although this explanation of the theft was a very unlikely one, Clifford hugged it with desperate persistency until the dawn of another suggestion in his mind. This was a better one certainly.
Was pretty Nell a somnambulist? If so, it only wanted a good, hard stretch of Clifford’s imagination to picture the girl as continually haunted, both by day and night, with the idea of helping and enriching her uncle, until at last her wishes ran away with her and took shape in her sleep in actual thefts on his behalf. Clifford had read tales of this sort, which he had indeed looked upon as highly imaginative; but now his love made him snatch at this or at any way of escaping the dreadful possibility of having to acknowledge that Nell was a thief.
The sleep-walking notion had brought him some comfort, and he felt quite hopeful about clearing up the mystery, when a faint noise outside his door made him start up and listen. He peeped out upon the landing, but there was no one to be seen. However, he kept his door ajar and watched.
In a few minutes he felt a rush of cold air from the ground floor of the house, and dashing quickly out upon the landing, he came face to face with Nell herself, as she ran up the stairs.
Now if it had not been for the strange occurrence of the night Clifford would have thought nothing of this early meeting. People rise early in the country, and Nell had the live stock to attend to, as she had herself told him, taking her turn with the servants. The fact of there being a visitor in the inn, too, would have explained satisfactorily the care she took not to make any noise.
But with his mind full of the agony of unwilling suspicion, the young man could not help noticing that Nell looked guilty and frightened, that the color suddenly left her cheeks, and that she stammered in her efforts to give him greeting.
“You—you get up very early. I—I had not expected to see you down before eight o’clock,” she managed to say at last.
And there was in her eyes, as she looked shyly up at him, an unmistakable anxiety which made his manner, as he answered, short and cold.
“I was disturbed in the night,” he said, stiffly.
And he avoided her eyes as steadily as she avoided his.