Mystery of the Inn by the Shore by Florence Warden

In the little dining-room at Shingle End Miss Bostal and Nell were sitting by the fire, the latter still absorbed in thoughts of Clifford, while the former tried to divert her companion's gloomy reverie by gossip about the doings of the vicar's wife and the high price of vegetables.

Miss Bostal looked anxiously from time to time into the coal-scuttle, divided between a wish to be economical with the fuel, on the one hand, and to have a good fire ready for her father's return on the other.

"How late he is to-night! " she presently exclaimed, with an astonished glance at the clock.

It was nearly ten o'clock, and the colonel, who spent most of the day, on all week-days, either at his club at Stroan or at the golf-links, was in the habit of returning home punctually at nine.

Nell looked up with a start.

"Why, child, how scared you look! What is the matter?"

And Miss Bostal took up the tongs, and picking out from the grate the little bits of cinder which had fallen from the fire, she arranged them judiciously on the top to prevent a wasteful blaze.

"Do I? " said Nell, trying to smile, but shivering as she did so. "Well, I think I have had enough to scare me to-day, haven't I?"

"Oh, my dear, I shouldn't worry myself too much if I were you. It was a very terrible thing, and I felt bound to scold you at the time for bringing this young man down here at all. But it will be a lesson to you to be careful, and I have no doubt that both the young men will have time to think the matter over, and will make up their minds to control their passions better in future."

"But Clifford -- Mr. King! I am afraid he is seriously hurt! " whimpered Nell, with the tears, at last released, running down her cheeks.

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.