“Indeed, that is just what I want you to do,” answered Nell, indignantly. “You know very well that I don’t wish to talk to you now or at any other time, but especially now.”
“What do you mean by ‘especially now,’ eh, Miss Fine-lady-peacock?” asked Jem, who had evidently been drinking, although he knew what he was doing.
But for answer the girl turned suddenly and started to run back to the inn. Jem, however, being prepared for some such attempt, soon caught her, and this time they were too far away from the detective to hear what they said, although he could distinguish the tones of their respective voices.
It was evident that the very next words uttered by Jem made a great and terrible impression upon Nell. Her face, which had at first expressed nothing but loathing and disgust, became in a moment rigid with horror, as the young man, standing quite close to her, and speaking in a hoarse whisper, said something to her in an excited and earnest manner.
So anxious was the detective to learn what it was which produced so strong an effect upon the girl, that he crawled from his hiding-place to the ditch which ran alongside the road, and crept along, sometimes in the water and sometimes only in the mud, until he was close enough to the two speakers to catch most of their words. When he stopped, the girl was refusing some request of the man’s, with all the energy of loathing and detestation.
“Of course I will not,” she was saying vehemently. “Of course, nobody would believe your stories for a moment. And I don’t suppose you would dare to tell them to anybody else, for fear of being taken for a lunatic.”
“Don’t you? Oh, all right, then,” sneered Jem. “I may tell that Hemming then, that’s been spying round here lately, and that’s put your uncle’s back up so by the questions he’s been asking. I may tell him, eh, Miss?”
The detective could not see the girl’s face as she answered, after a little pause:
“You may come up with me to Shingle End, and tell your story to the colonel and Miss Theodora; that’s what you may do—if you dare.”
There was another pause, and the detective knew, from the way in which she had uttered these words, as well as from the attitude in which she waited for the fisherman’s answer, that she was less defiant than her words. At last the fisherman spoke again. And it was clear that the proposal was not to his taste.