“I know that,” said the doctor quickly. “But to come back to the matter in hand. I don’t want to be unreasonable, but I do hope that you will both behave—well, how can I put it?—with sense and discretion. After all, it isn’t very long to wait; you’ll be married within less than a month from now, and then you’ll be together for always. Till you’re married, I’m quite sure you’d best see as little as possible of one another.”
“I quite see what you mean, and I daresay you’re right.” He was beginning to feel himself a pariah.
“I’ll be going back to the Thatched House for lunch,” he went on forlornly, remembering vividly how only yesterday he had been pressed to come to-day to this house from which he now felt he was being expelled.
“I think that will be best,” said Dr. Maclean uncomfortably. “I’ll telephone through and say you’re coming along.”
CHAPTER X
A fortnight to the day after the exhumation of Mrs. Garlett, Dr. Maclean, after reading his necessary letters, walked through the hall into the kitchen.
“Elsie,” he said abruptly, “I want your good help. First, go and tell your mistress that I require to see her about something urgent and private. Then get hold of Miss Jean and make her stay with you in here till I have done with your mistress.”
The woman, an old and trusted friend by now, just nodded her head. “Ay,” she said, “I’ll do all that.”
A few moments later Mrs. Maclean hurried into her husband’s study. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly. “You shouldn’t frighten me like that, Jock. ‘Secret and urgent’ indeed!”
“Lock the door,” he said briefly.