everything and everybody that interested her—her employer, Harry Garlett, the famous county cricketer, his sickly wife, and even the country village gossip.

Even so, in defence of her heart, Lucy Warren had put up a good fight—a fight which, as the time went on, stimulated, excited, sometimes even maddened Guy Cheale. He found, with surprise and even discomfiture, that what he had begun in idle and ignoble sport, was becoming to him a matter of interest, even of importance.

This, perhaps, was why now, while Lucy Warren stood in the dark drawing room, her mind filled with tense, questioning memories, Guy Cheale, padding up and down the lawn like some huge, loose-limbed creature of the woods, was also asking himself intimate, searching questions.

He was already ruefully aware that this would probably be one of the last times that he and this poor girl whom he had forced to love him would meet, and it irked him to know how much he would miss her from out his strange, sinister life—the life which he knew was ebbing slowly but surely to a close. He had made love to many, many women, but this was the first time he had been thrown into close intimacy with a country girl of Lucy’s class—that sturdy, self-respecting British yeoman class which has been for generations the backbone of the old country.

Very soon—how soon to a day not even Guy Cheale could tell—he would have left the Thatched Farm. And oh! how 15he would like to take Lucy with him, even for a little while. But, bad as he was, there was yet in him still a small leaven of good which forced him to admit that he owed Lucy Warren something for the love which, if passionate, was so pure and selfless. Sometimes, when he felt more ailing than usual, he would tell himself that when within sight of that mysterious bourne from which no traveller returns he would send for Lucy, marry her, and be nursed by her to the end.

15

But now, on this warm May night, he put painful thoughts away, and determined to extract the greatest possible enjoyment from what could only be, alas! the fleeting present.

Treading over the grass as lightly as might be, he leaped across the narrow gravel footpath which ran round the front of the house.

And then a most untoward thing happened! Unaware that Lucy had unlatched the hasp of the long French window, Guy Cheale leaned against it, panting, and fell forward into the room—his heavy boot crashing through one of the lower panes.

 Prev. P 14/292 next