Mystery of the Inn by the Shore by Florence Warden

To bring a woman into focus, by means even of a scandal, has always been a sure way to bring upon her more than her fair share of the admiration of the other sex. When, therefore, the object of public attention is gifted with unusual attractions of person and manner, the havoc she makes in susceptible masculine hearts is proportionately great.

Clifford was not a particularly weak man, and he would have scorned, a week ago, the idea that he could love a woman the more for being under suspicion of theft. But it is incontestable, for all that, that the stronger the suspicious circumstances grew which hedged her round, the stronger also became his own feelings of tender interest.

If she were not the thief, then who could it have been? And if it were indeed she who had taken his watch and money, and dropped or thrown away the former on her way between Shingle End and the Blue Lion, what was the cause which had prompted the act?

The case for somnambulism still seemed strong to Clifford, for this would have accounted for the frightened look of half-remembrance which he had seen more than once in her face, when the theft was being discussed.

On the other hand, she had certainly been wide awake when he saw her start for Shingle End across the fields that morning, at the very time when she must have been carrying the watch.

And if not somnambulism, then what other motive could there be for this yielding to a horrible temptation on the part of a beautiful, amiable and apparently candid and good girl? Was she the victim to that doubtful disease invented to afford magistrates an excuse for discharging well-connected thieves "of superior education? " Was she, in fact, a "kleptomaniac?"

Or, again: Were the difficulties of her uncle not over, as she had represented them to be, and was she the victim of a misguided determination to clear them away, even at the sacrifice of her honesty?

Each supposition seemed to Clifford more improbable than the last; and when, after compensating Jem Stickels for his roll in the mud by throwing him a half-crown which had been left in his pocket untouched by the midnight thief, he caught sight of Nell on the opposite bank of the river, he was again ready to throw his doubts to the winds.

There was always a boat moored to each side of the river at this point, so Clifford ran down to the water's edge, and punted himself across.

Jem Stickels burst into a mocking, insulting laugh, but Clifford did not care. As his friends, Jordan and Otto Conybeare would have said, he was by this time "too far gone."

Nell had disappeared again by the time he got back into the garden, and he had to look about for some minutes before he perceived her, crossing the fields, this time in the direction of Fleet, at a great rate. She had a basket on her arm, and she was walking so quickly that Clifford could at first scarcely believe that the figure which had got over so much ground in so few minutes could really be that of the girl he had seen in her uncle's garden a few minutes before.

He was determined to show her his recovered watch, always hoping against hope that a fresh development of the mystery would bring about the longed-for explanation. But before he could overtake her, she disappeared from his sight over the crest of the rising ground at Fleet, and when he got upon the hill, in his turn, she was nowhere to be seen.

It was not for some time, after exploring right and left, that he saw Nell, with an old broom in her hand, emerge from a poor little cottage which stood by itself on the marsh below. She set to work very vigorously to sweep out the dust of the cottage floor, the doorstep and the bit of paved ground outside; and Clifford had stood for some seconds at a little distance, warned by the expression of her face that she was in no mood for conversation, when she at last raised her eyes and met his.

A shock of pain convulsed the young man when he saw what a change the past few hours had made in the girl. Instead of the placid sweetness of the day before, there was in her eyes such a world of sadness, of terror, that Clifford's heart smote him, and he wished that he had suffered his loss quietly without a word to anybody at the inn.

She stopped in her work when she saw him and stood erect, waiting, in an attitude which had something of defiance in it.

"You have something to say to me, I suppose? " she said at once, coldly.

Clifford did not immediately answer, but his hand went involuntarily up to the chain of his watch, which he was now wearing.

In an instant her face became as white as that of a dead person.

"Where -- where did you find it? " stammered she.

And she trembled so violently that the broom slipped out of her hand and fell to the ground.