“Well, well, it was a great pity,” said Sir Neville. “You would have saved yourself a lot of misery, and it would have done the lady no harm, as you see. And now I want some information, if you please, as to the night of the murder. Did you, or did you not, hear any one go out of the house or come in, when you had come back with Miss Bostal from your visit to Jem Stickels at his lodgings?”
“I—did hear something,” faltered Nell.
“What was it?”
“Almost as soon as Miss Bostal left me in the kitchen, I heard the back door open and shut.”
“Ah! Did you go to see who it was that had opened the door?”
“No.”
“I suppose you had some idea in your mind about the sounds. What was it?”
“I thought it was Miss Theodora. She was always running in and out of the garden, feeding the chickens or looking for eggs or fetching wood from the stack at the side of the house or water from the well.”
“So that you just thought it was she, and then troubled yourself no more about it?”
“Yes.”