“Murder! Against Clifford!” cried she, springing to the door and gasping for breath. “Oh, you don’t mean that! You can’t!”
She burst into a violent fit of weeping, which made the colonel rather ashamed of himself. He tried to calm her, assuring her that nobody but the doctors, who were pompous asses without an idea how to treat men of powers and position vastly superior to their own, would ever entertain such a monstrous opinion. But she could not find enough comfort in his words; and at last, in spite of his and his daughter’s efforts to detain her, she set off to walk to the Blue Lion, that she might at least have the assurance she longed for that nobody there shared the colonel’s rashly expressed opinion.
“Mind, Nell, you are to come back here to sleep,” commanded Miss Bostal, who objected to the girl’s remaining in the vicinity of her highly undesirable lover.
But Nell would give no promise. She was deeply anxious, not only to hear how Clifford was and what people thought of Jem Stickels’s death, but, also, to know how soon she would be able to speak to Clifford, whose advice had become more necessary than ever.
Refusing, therefore, a rather perfunctory offer on the colonel’s part to escort her along the lonely road, she bade her friends good-by and started on her way to the Blue Lion.
But she got little reward for her pains. The house was shut up when she reached it; and Meg, who let her in, started at the sight of her, and hurried her up to her room, with scant information. Of course, the servant had heard of the finding of Jem Stickels’s body; but she either would not or could not offer any opinions, either her own or anybody else’s, as to the manner in which it came about; and Nell, fearing to rouse suspicion, was fain to go to bed unsatisfied. Only one piece of comfort was given her: Mr. King, who had a professional nurse in attendance on him, was getting on as well as they could hope.
On the following morning, George Claris, who looked worried and anxious, told his niece, as soon as breakfast was over, to pack her trunk for her journey to London. Nell did not dare to make any protest, nor even to ask any questions of her uncle, whose mood was clearly one to be respected. She had to content herself with Meg’s report, obtained from the nurse, that Clifford had passed a good night.
Before ten o’clock Nell and her uncle were driving toward Stroan in the dog-cart, with her trunk behind them.
They had not gone far when they noticed that something unusual was going on along the road. A party of men, among whom were two or three of the Stroan police, were busily engaged in examining the road itself and the ditch on either side. Nell, with feminine quickness of perception, guessed that this search was in some way connected with the discovery of Jem Stickels’s body on the previous evening; but her uncle, being less acute, pulled up his horse, and made inquiries.
“Hallo, what’s up?” said he, addressing the nearest policeman.