innocent pleasure in life—because of her state.”

Dr. Maclean was more touched than he would have thought possible.

“Dear me,” he exclaimed, “that was very decent of her!”

“It was,” agreed the other, “it was indeed, Maclean. And she meant every word of what she wrote. It was only yesterday, our thirteenth wedding-day, that she said to me, ‘I don’t like your spending a week-end at home. It doesn’t seem natural, my dear.’ Thank God I did—thank God I did!”

“I think everything has gone very much better here this last year,” said the doctor thoughtfully.

“How d’you mean?”

“I mean because of Miss Cheale.”

The other did not answer for a moment, and then he said in a low voice:

“That’s true in a way, though I don’t think Emily liked Miss Cheale. I have at times regretted having agreed that she should come.”

“They weren’t the kind of women who would naturally take to one another,” answered Dr. Maclean.

41“And yet my wife quite liked that worthless brother of Miss Cheale’s. He actually came to tea with her the other day.”

41

“Mrs. Garlett always liked men better than women,” said the doctor dryly. He had at once guessed the identity of Lucy Warren’s drawing-room visitor, and it had amused him to picture “poor Emily’s” wrath had she even dimly suspected the fact.

He added, after a pause: “Your wife was a generous sort, Garlett—I mean about money.”

“Yes, she was that, certainly.”

Both men remained silent for a moment. It was true that the poor woman now lying dead upstairs had always shown herself generous about money, though not, excepting to her husband, about anything else. But now was not the moment to recall her cantankerous and narrow outlook on life.

“Well,” said the doctor at last, “I must be going now. I’ll leave a note in her letter-box for Miss Prince as I go by. It will be just as well for Agatha Cheale to have a friend with her this 

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