laurels. I think from what I could make out, they were talking about the war. There was no love-making that I could see.”

73

“You must understand,” explained Mr. Kentworthy, looking up, “that the person in question did not give me this connected account that I have read out. I had more or less to drag out of her these apparently unimportant details.”

“There is nothing there about a quarrel or tears,” observed the doctor.

“We are coming to that,” said the other quietly.

“It must have been exactly a week later,” he read on, “that I was there again. I wondered if I should see them, and sure enough I did! It was a moonlit night, so I could see their figures clearly. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, for I was afraid of going too near, owing to its being so much more light than it had been the time before, but I did hear Mr. Garlett speaking as if he thought it was wrong of them to be there together at all. He begged the lady’s pardon ever so many times, and seemed a good deal distressed. As for her, she was sobbing bitterly, and kept saying, ‘I am very tired, or I shouldn’t be upset like this.’”

“I may as well read you the impression the story made on me at the time,” said Mr. Kentworthy, and he went on with his notebook:

“I pressed her again and again to give me some indication of who the young lady was. I cannot believe her assertion that it was a stranger to her. But she persisted in her statement that though she knew the man was Garlett she did not know his companion. If this is true it follows that Garlett’s companion was some woman who had come out either from Grendon or perhaps from an even greater distance to spend an hour with him. Note: Make inquiries as to how he spent his time, and with whom, during his frequent absences from home before his wife’s death.”

“You cannot be surprised,” he added looking up, “that I feel everything points to Mr. Garlett’s companion in the wood having been the young lady with whom he is now on the eve of marriage.”

“I suppose I can’t expect you to agree with me,” said Dr. Maclean, “when I say that I am convinced that the story is entirely false from beginning to end. I know my niece never met Harry Garlett secretly at night, or, for the matter 74of that, in the daytime. Only his own admission would make me believe that Garlett met any woman in such compromising and dangerous circumstances.”

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