Turning slowly round, she called out to some one who apparently had remained in the passage outside.
“You can come in now, Miss Cheale. I was right and you were wrong. I did hear a noise upstairs—after all, my bedroom’s just over here. It was Lucy Warren—in here with a man. He has just escaped through the window.”
And then Miss Cheale, the woman whom Lucy Warren hated, feared and, yes, despised, came into the room. She gave one swift glance of contempt and reprobation at the unhappy culprit, glanced at the open French window, and, turning to her employer, exclaimed:
“I will see Lucy to-morrow morning, Mrs. Garlett. Please come up to bed at once. You’ve done a very dangerous thing in coming down like this!”
The invalid lady allowed herself to be led, unresisting, away; and then, mechanically, Lucy went over to the window and stared out, her bosom heaving with sobs, and tears streaming from her eyes.
But no kindly, mocking, caressing whisper came to comfort and reassure her out of the darkness. By this time Guy Cheale must be well on his way back to the farm.
Turning slowly, she threaded her way through the white-shrouded furniture, unlocked the door nearest to her, and walked out, forgetting or uncaring that the electric light which had been turned on by Mrs. Garlett by the other door was still burning.
CHAPTER II
It was twelve o’clock the next morning, and the sun was streaming into the pleasant downstairs rooms of the Thatched House. The only sign of last night’s alarums and excursions was the broken window in the drawing room, and of that no one but the three closely concerned were aware, for early in the morning Miss Cheale had crept downstairs, put out the electric light, and locked both the doors.
But Mrs. Garlett had been thoroughly upset by what had happened in the night, and Miss Cheale had thought it well to telephone for the doctor.