Prince looked sharply at her friend.

“Why, just now you said he had been working hard lately?”

“I didn’t mean at the factory.”

“It’s all very well to be unconventional,” went on Miss Prince, “but human nature doesn’t alter. For my part I think it’s a mistake to mix up attractive girls with married men.”

“Mr. Dodson isn’t a married man,” observed Agatha Cheale.

“No, but Harry Garlett is.”

The other made no answer, and Miss Prince suddenly exclaimed triumphantly, “Why, there they are!”

Agatha Cheale turned quickly round.

Yes, Miss Prince was right. Through the window could be seen two figures walking slowly across the meadow, to the right of which stretched the little wood.

“I should have thought that Harry would have had more sense! I don’t wonder they’re already beginning to be talked about,” observed Miss Prince.

“What a lot of disgusting people there are in Grendon,” said Agatha Cheale. There was a note of bitter scorn in her voice. “It’s Saturday to-day. That’s why they’re walking back together. It’s the first time they’ve done it.”

Miss Prince would have been not only surprised but deeply shocked had she been able to see into her friend’s unhappy heart. Agatha Cheale, gazing out on those two who were just coming through the little gate which led from the cornfield into the garden of the Thatched House, had felt a surge of intolerable suspicion and jealousy sweep over her, and that though her reason told her that the suspicion, at any rate, was utterly uncalled-for and absurd.

Miss Prince looked at her wrist watch—one of her few concessions to modern ways.

“I must be going,” she exclaimed; “it’s almost one o’clock.”

28She had only just left the room when there came a knock at the door. “Come in!” called out Miss Cheale, and Lucy Warren appeared.

28

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