But it was not for him that Miss Bostal spent her sympathy.
“It will be a lesson to him!” she repeated, rather frigidly.
“And Jem—he will certainly keep his word and give information to the police this time!”
“Information of what?”
“Why, of—the robbery; of what he says he saw!” said Nell, fixing anxious eyes on her friend, and dropping her voice.
Miss Bostal smiled in an amused way.
“Haven’t you got over your dread of that yet? For my part, I shall be very glad when something is known. My father has been to the expense of an extra bolt on our back door since this scare has been about; and I myself can never sleep more than an hour without jumping up with the fancy that I hear a burglar in the dining-room underneath.”
But Nell said nothing. She remained sitting in a constrained, almost awkward attitude, crouching over the fire, and throwing at her companion, from time to time, glances full of shy inquiry and of unmistakable alarm.
Miss Bostal began to regard her protégée with looks, if not of suspicion, at least of perplexity.
It was plain that the old difficulty of a maid and her lovers had begun to cast the shadow of estrangement between the friends.