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“I saw her to-day,” said Jean slowly, “Mr. Garlett overtook me after I had started walking home the field way. He suggested I should go through his garden—and then such a horrid thing happened!”

“What happened?” asked the husband and wife together.

“We were going across the lawn when we suddenly heard the sound of crying. It was coming, it seems, from Miss Cheale’s sitting room. Mr. Garlett thought it was a child who had hurt itself, and asked me to go into the house. And then we found that it was Lucy Warren who was crying—and that there was such a horrid scene going on! I’ve never seen any one look as angry as Miss Cheale looked. I thought her such a quiet person.”

Mrs. Maclean asked eagerly: “Why was she angry?”

“From what I could make out,” said Jean, “Mrs. Garlett heard the French window of the drawing room open in the middle of last night. She thought it was a burglar, and she insisted on going downstairs; so she and Miss Cheale went downstairs together, and there was Lucy Warren with a man! But he escaped by the window out into the garden before they could see who it was.”

“I don’t wonder Miss Cheale was angry!” exclaimed Jean’s aunt. “I can hardly believe such a tale of Lucy Warren. She’s such a superior-looking girl, such a pet, too, of Miss Prince’s. Miss Prince was saying to me the other day how sorry she was she had ever allowed Mrs. Garlett to have Lucy, but she felt the Thatched House situation was such a good one that she ought not to keep the girl from it.”

“Lucy will go back to her now. Miss Prince isn’t the woman to let a good maid go begging,” observed Dr. Maclean. “They didn’t say a word of all that to me this morning.” He added, “I couldn’t think what had upset Mrs. Garlett.”

“When we came in, Miss Cheale was trying to get out of Lucy who the man was,” went on Jean eagerly. “But all she would say was that she didn’t see why she shouldn’t have a talk with a friend anywhere she chose. She actually appealed to Mr. Garlett to say if she wasn’t right!”

“What did he say?” asked Mrs. Maclean.

32“In a way he took Lucy’s part, for he reminded Miss Cheale that the drawing room was never used. But of course that only made her more angry—in fact, she was shaking with rage, her face was livid.”

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