“Only that the cottage is occupied with your authority. That takes it off our special list of empty buildings.”
“I’d be glad if it went no further than that, and the sergeant will agree with me there. Good night, officer. I shall sleep peacefully now, thanks to you. You can’t take a drink, I suppose?”
The big man smiled ruefully. “No, sir; thanks just the same. I think you’ll be a welcome visitor at the station. Good night, and I’ll slip past the cottage without disturbing our friend.”
He saluted, the French window closed behind him without a sound, and his great bulk melted into the darkness.
CHAPTER IV
JEAN
SOME TWO weeks after the staff of Beech Lodge had been completed by the engagement of the gardener, Mrs. Millicent and her daughter were walking along a quiet lane at a little distance from their old home. The house itself they had not seen since the time of the tragedy, and over them still hung the weight of a great grief. It had touched Mrs. Millicent’s hair with gray and given her a strangely wistful expression. Her sorrow was increased by the belief that her husband had had an enemy, the husband who had worshiped her with love and devotion for twenty years of married companionship. What enemy could such a man make in all the world?
For Jean, her daughter, the blow had been no less severe. And it had a deeper significance. Dazed and stupefied, she was nevertheless aware of the power behind the blow, the power that dealt it. Where her mother was inclined to give way with a hopeless wonder at the cruelty of fate, Jean perceived that the hand that thus struck the helpless might not have been stayed by her father’s blood. If her father were in the way of something—she knew not what—might there not be others similarly threatened? The resiliency of her youth refused merely to accept the situation.
They came to a fork in the lane, one turn of which led past Beech Lodge and then on to their own small house. Mrs. Millicent took the other turn instinctively, but Jean, for some reason she could never explain, felt a sudden impulse to pass this time by the road they had both hitherto avoided. She stopped, and her mother glanced back with surprise.
“What is it, dear?”
“I don’t know, mother, but”—she hesitated—“I rather want to go this way.”