He uttered a stifled oath, then stood up and, walking forward, felt in the darkness for the terror-stricken girl. For a few minutes they stood together listening intently; then, reassured, he led her over to a couch and, throwing himself down on it, he clasped her to him closely. His arms were round her, he was kissing her eagerly, thirstily, when all at once she gave a stifled cry—she had heard the handle turn in the locked door. “I expect it’s Miss Cheale,” she whispered. “She taxed me the other night with having a sweetheart I was ashamed of! Go away—quick! She’ll get round to the window in a minute——” Guy Cheale leaped up and rushed across the room. Desperately he tried to find the awkward, old-fashioned catch, and just as the second door of the drawing room—a door the existence of which Lucy had forgotten—was unlatched, and the electric light switched on, he flung open the window and disappeared into the dark garden. But the figure which advanced slowly into the L-shaped room was not that of Agatha Cheale. Lucy, petrified with shame and fear, knew it for that of the invalid mistress of the Thatched House. 16Clad in an old-fashioned white dressing gown, her pallid face filled with mingled curiosity and fright, Mrs. Garlett looked like a wraith, and far more willingly would the girl, who stood before her with hanging head, have faced a real spirit. 16 For a long, breathless moment Mrs. Garlett, dazzled by the light, peered round her, looking this way and that. Then, “Lucy!” she exclaimed, in a tone of keen surprise and anger, and again, “Lucy?” Turning slowly round, she called out to some one who apparently had remained in the passage outside. “You can come in now, Miss Cheale. I was right and you were wrong. I did hear a noise upstairs—after all, my bedroom’s just over here. It was Lucy Warren—in here with a man. He has just escaped through the window.” And then Miss Cheale, the woman whom Lucy Warren hated, feared and, yes, despised, came into the room. She gave one swift glance of contempt and reprobation at the unhappy culprit, glanced at the open French window, and, turning to her employer, exclaimed: “I will see Lucy to-morrow morning, Mrs. Garlett. Please come up to bed at once. You’ve done a very dangerous thing in coming down
Prev.
Back
Top