Claris allowed himself to be coaxed into compliance with her wishes, and presently disappeared into the bar. Then, when they were alone together, Clifford noticed a sudden alteration in her manner toward himself. It was no longer the confiding, childish behavior of a light-hearted girl; it was the responsible gravity of an older and thoughtful woman.
“You are not to distress yourself, Mr. King,” she said, quietly. “Although it is a terrible thing for us, we are, in a way, used to it, for, as you heard me say, there have been two or three cases of theft here before. I hope you are not in a hurry to get back to Stroan, for I should like, before you go, to have a search made of the house and a few more inquiries.”
She would not listen to his protests, his objections, but left him and went upstairs. Clifford, miserable and perplexed, went out into the garden and strolled among the cabbages and carrots, torn by doubts which he tried in vain to suppress.
In about ten minutes he saw, from the corner of the garden where he was smoking his pipe under an apple-tree, Nell coming quickly out of the house by the back way, and flying like an arrow down to the river’s bank. From the glimpse he caught of her face, he saw that she looked scared and guilty, and that she cast around her the glance of a person who does not wish to be observed.
Hastily unmooring one of the boats which lay by the bank, she got in, sculled across the stream, made the boat fast to the opposite shore, and began to run across the open fields as fast as her feet could carry her.
It occurred at once to Clifford that she must be going to take counsel with her friend, Miss Bostal, and he started in the direction of Shingle End himself, thinking that it would be a good idea for him to open his heart to that lady, and re-assure Nell as to his own trust in her through the unimpeachable lips of her elderly friend.
He went by the road, and sauntering along at a very sedate pace, reached the little tumbledown residence of Colonel Bostal just as Nell, emerging from it by a back-gate into the fields, started on her journey back home. She did not see him, but he, looking through the hedge at her, was able to discern that her face was, if anything, more sad than it had been when she left home, and that her eyes were swollen with recent tears.
The prim old maid had been unsympathetic and harsh to her poor little protégée, that was evident, and Clifford felt that he hated the starchy spinster for it.
He could not, however, help feeling that he should like to hear the opinion on the whole matter of people who, like the Bostals, were acquainted with the family at the Blue Lion, and who were at the same time on friendly terms with them.
Miss Bostal herself opened the door as before, and from this and other signs it was easy for Clifford to discover that she and her father kept no servants. She seemed not to be at all surprised by his visit, and when he began to apologize for intruding upon her again, and at such an early hour of the day, she only smiled and asked him to come in.