like this!”

The invalid lady allowed herself to be led, unresisting, away; and then, mechanically, Lucy went over to the window and stared out, her bosom heaving with sobs, and tears streaming from her eyes.

But no kindly, mocking, caressing whisper came to comfort and reassure her out of the darkness. By this time Guy Cheale must be well on his way back to the farm.

Turning slowly, she threaded her way through the white-shrouded furniture, unlocked the door nearest to her, and walked out, forgetting or uncaring that the electric light which had been turned on by Mrs. Garlett by the other door was still burning.

17

CHAPTER II

It was twelve o’clock the next morning, and the sun was streaming into the pleasant downstairs rooms of the Thatched House. The only sign of last night’s alarums and excursions was the broken window in the drawing room, and of that no one but the three closely concerned were aware, for early in the morning Miss Cheale had crept downstairs, put out the electric light, and locked both the doors.

But Mrs. Garlett had been thoroughly upset by what had happened in the night, and Miss Cheale had thought it well to telephone for the doctor.

“No good to herself—and no good to anybody else, poor soul!”

Dr. Maclean was uttering his thoughts aloud, as even the most discreet of physicians will sometimes do when with an intimate acquaintance. He was speaking of his patient, Mrs. Garlett, and addressing Agatha Cheale.

There were people in Grendon who envied Agatha Cheale her position as practical mistress of the charming old house. She was known to be distantly related to its master, Harry Garlett, and that made her position there less that of a dependent than it might have been. No one else used the pretty little sitting room where she and the doctor were now standing. But Dr. Maclean—shrewd Scot that he was—knew that Agatha Cheale was not to be envied, and that her job was both a difficult and a thankless one.

As he uttered his thoughts aloud, his kindly eyes became focussed on the woman before him. She was slight and dark, her abundant, wavy hair cut almost as short as a boy’s. This morning the intensely bright eyes which were the most arresting feature of her face, and the only one she had in common with her 

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