“Look here,” he went on, in a tone which was meant to be persuasive, but which was to Nell repellant in its coarse assumption of familiarity, “I don’t want to rush you into anything. You know what I have to sell, and you know what the price is. If you don’t care to pay it, well, you know how I can pay myself in coin of the realm. Now I’ll give you till to-morrow night. If you’ll see me to-morrow, down at your own garden fence, where you’ll be quite safe, mind, for I mean quite fair and above board, and if you’ll speak me fair and be civil, I’ll hold my tongue, and wild horses nor all the tecs in Lon’on shouldn’t make me peach; but if you don’t choose to do this, and it’s a precious small thing to make such a fuss about, why, then, I’ll go off to Hemming and get the five pounds, and you can guess what’ll happen, if you don’t know.”
As the man looked at her, with bloodshot, inflamed eyes, enjoying in anticipation the kiss which he felt she was bound to give him, Nell’s heart sank. He would not surely speak in this tone to her, if the proofs of which he had spoken were not very strong ones.
“You must give me time to think,” she faltered, turning her head away to escape the gaze of the lustful eyes, but keeping a sharp eye on his movements all the time.
She felt keen resentment against Miss Theodora, who, in her amiable folly, had exposed her to this persecution. Luckily that lady herself appeared a few seconds later, and then Nell at once made the excuse of going to fetch the tea-things to get out of the room.
Once outside the door, however, she ran through the passage to the back of the house, slipped out into the garden, and ran home across the fields as fast as her fleet little feet could carry her.
“Since she likes his society so much, she may enjoy a tête-à-tête with him!” she said to herself, not without a bitter feeling that her old friend and protectress had betrayed her in her eagerness to reclaim the prodigal.
Before she reached the Blue Lion, Nell had made up her mind what to do. She felt that she must have some advice of a more solid, more worldly kind than that of kindly, sentimental, narrow-minded Miss Theodora. So she wrote a little note, the first she had ever sent him, to Clifford King, and sent it by a safe hand to Stroan to catch the night mail.
Her note was very short, containing as it did only the following words:—
“Dear Mr. King:
“If it would not be too inconvenient to you to come down to Stroan to-morrow, I should be very glad of the opportunity of asking your advice upon a matter in which I do not dare to trust my own judgment, and do not dare to consult my uncle.