“I do not know what you mean,” Henrietta answered, her lip curling. And she looked at him as she would have looked at Judas.
“Still,” he murmured, with a side-glance at Nadin, “if you would be advised by me——”
“I have nothing to say,” she said curtly.
“Mind you, I’ve told her nothing.” Mrs. Gilson said, intervening in time to prevent an outburst on Nadin’s part. “I was bid to get her shoes, and I got her shoes. I held my tongue.”
“Then she knows nothing!” the chaplain exclaimed.
“Oh, she knows enough,” Nadin struck in, his harsh, dogmatic nature getting the better of him. “If she did not know we should not come to her. We know our business. Now, where’s the man hiding? For there the boy will be. Where did you leave him, my lass?”
Mr. Sutton, whom circumstances had forced into a part so distasteful, saw a chance of helping the girl; and even of reinstating himself in some degree in her eyes.
“I can answer that,” he said. “She did not meet him. The young lady went to the bottom of Troutbeck Lane, where, I understand, the boat came to land. But there was no one there to meet her. And she came back without seeing any one. I can vouch for that. And that,” the chaplain continued, throwing out his chest, and speaking with dignity, “is all that Miss Damer did, and I can speak to it.”
Nadin exploded.
“Don’t tell me that she went to the place for nothing, man!”