intensely repellent in the marriage of a strong healthy man to a hopeless invalid. Deep down in his heart the honest Scotsman knew what would have happened to himself had he been in the shoes of Harry Garlett. He knew that his flesh and blood would not have borne such a difficult, unnatural situation, and he had long admired the young man’s straight, simple, clean way of life. Thanks to that dish of early strawberries, Harry Garlett would now be able to remake his life on happy, natural lines.

Slightly ashamed of such thoughts coming at such a time, he glanced at the young woman before him. Would she now become the real mistress of this delightful house? The doctor suspected she would make a try for it. But he could not help hoping that the newly made widower would in time meet with a happier fate than marriage with this secretive and, he suspected, very jealous-natured woman. Dr. Maclean liked Harry Garlett well enough to hope that, after a decent interval, this now mournful house would be filled with gay, wholesome, girlish laughter, and the patter of little feet.

And while these secret thoughts were rushing through his brain Agatha Cheale was standing motionless, a look of stark terror on her bloodless face.

“Go into your room,” he said at last, “and try and get a little rest.”

Together they left the room of death, and the doctor 39quickly made his way downstairs through the still, silent house.

39

Rather unreasonably, it gave Dr. Maclean somewhat of a shock to find Harry Garlett comfortably stretched out in an easy chair, reading a novel. But as the doctor advanced into the room the master of the Thatched House leaped to his feet.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “I hope you’ve made her more comfortable, Maclean? I’m sorry to have dragged you out like this, but Miss Cheale was so very much upset and worried——”

Then something in the gravity of the doctor’s face pulled the speaker up short. He added quickly: “Isn’t she so well? Would you like me to get Tasker?”

Dr. Maclean took a step forward; he put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder:

“Garlett, I’ve a sad thing to break to you, man——”

He waited a moment, then said quietly: “Your poor wife is dead—an obvious case of heart failure following an attack of acute indigestion.”

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