“Of course I shall,” he answered bitterly—“and be known for the rest of my life as the medical man who was bamboozled into giving a wrong death certificate.”
Dismay kept her silent. Till this moment she had only thought of Harry Garlett, and of how all this would affect Jean. She now realized what it would mean to her husband.
She suddenly went very pale, and Dr. Maclean felt queerly touched. He got up and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
“Come, come, woman,” he said a little huskily. “Things are never as bad as they look! Many a better man than I has made that kind of mistake. As for Jean, she’s young yet. She’ll get over it, never fear.” As his wife remained silent, he added: “It isn’t as if we’d been improvident—if need be we can leave Terriford.”
“No,” said Mrs. Maclean in a low tone, “we must stay and face it out. But as for Jean, we’ll have to make some plan. She won’t go away now—not a hope of it. But if yon man’s hanged we’ll get her right away; I mean to some place where no one will have heard about this awful thing—to my sister in New Zealand, or to the MacPhersons in San Francisco.”
He looked at her, amazed. This was foresight with a vengeance. Why, she had already tried, judged, condemned, and, yes, hanged, Harry Garlett!
“Till this morning,” he said with a groan, “I would have staked my life on yon man’s innocence.”
And then Mrs. Maclean said something which startled her husband.
“It’s all so strange,” she said musingly, “because, as you well know, Jock, he hardly knew our Jean then.”
“It had nothing to do with Jean!” he said violently. “For God’s sake, Jenny, put that horrible idea out of your mind. The truth is—I can say so to you—Emily Garlett had become impossible, intolerable——”