He hurried her into the hall, and then throwing his arms round her, he strained her to him.
“It makes all the difference having you with me——”
Poor Jean! Since this great trouble had come upon them all, Mrs. Maclean had seemed to think it almost unseemly for the lovers to be alone together. Even the yew edge walk had become, by her plainly expressed wish, forbidden ground.
It was wonderful to be alone with him like this, heart to heart, and lips to lips; almost too wonderful to be true.
But at last the girl gently withdrew herself from Garlett’s enfolding arms.
“What happened last night?” she asked.
“I suppose I’m a fool to mind,” he answered. “You are the only thing that matters to me now, Jean. But I’d better tell you about it, for you will have to know some time.”
“Yes?” she said, and taking up his hand she laid it against her cheek. Though the mere fact that they were alone together brought with it deep comfort as well as a hidden ecstatic bliss of which she was half ashamed, she yet felt not only frightened, but terribly perplexed. What did this that had happened last evening portend?
“The moment I’d turned the corner on my way to Bonnie Doon the police came and ransacked everything here. I’ll show you the state in which those brutes left my study!”
“Who did all this?” she asked.