He was ready to find excuses for her, and told his sister a second time to hold her tongue. It was not in Amy’s nature to hold her tongue when there was an occasion to loosen it, and the occasion came at once. Mrs. Groves, whose room was at the end of the hall, and who boasted that she slept with one eye open, had heard the sound of voices, and coming from her room to investigate, met Amy and Ruth.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why are you here in your dressing-gowns, and what’s that light doing at this time of night?”
She pointed to the light shining over the open transom of Sherry’s door, and started in that direction.
“Don’t go there,” Amy said in a mysterious whisper, and then the whole story came out, Mrs. Groves listening with an incredulous sneer and look of exultation.
“I always mistrusted her and believed there was some mystery back of her, but didn’t think she’d be up to quite so barefaced an act.”
“But Alex. thinks she’s asleep,” Amy said, and Mrs. Groves replied: “That’s a ruse to cover up the theft if discovered. She told one of the maids yesterday that she was homesick and believed she should go home. If she is asleep she will see the things in the morning and either take them back or tell you about it. If she does neither, depend upon it they are in her trunk and she is going to leave.”
This seemed feasible, and with their minds a good deal unsettled with regard to Sherry, Amy and Ruth returned to their rooms. Early the next morning they stole up to the attic, finding Mrs. Groves there before them, looking into the chest, diving to the bottom and pulling the articles out. With an ominous shake of the head she said to them: “I told you so; they are not here, and she has been down more than an hour. She must have seen them. They are in her trunk. Sleep-walking! Fiddlesticks! I walked just as much.”
“Seems as if she wanted to prove the girl guilty,” Amy said, as she went down to the piazza, where she found Alex. and told him of Mrs. Groves’ suspicions.
“Don’t you believe her,” he said. “She has never liked the girl. She is always finding fault with her because she seems superior to the others, and is glad of a chance to hurt her.”
And still he felt anxious, knowing Sherry must see the articles if they were in her room, and wondering what she would say. He found her standing by his mother’s chair as usual when he went in to breakfast, and noticed how pale she was, with dark rings around her eyes, and how languidly she moved, as if very tired. Mrs. Marsh knew the story by this time, and half the guests besides, and Sherry felt instinctively that she was an object of more interest than usual as she waited upon the table. For aught she knew she had slept soundly. She had not dreamed, and could not account for her headache and weakness and the dreadful nausea which sometimes nearly overmastered her. A great aversion to the place had taken possession of her, with a desire to leave it.