“He almost persuaded me that it would be worth our while to let Jean give him an interview,” observed the doctor hesitatingly.
“I disagree,” she said emphatically.
“Well, the question won’t arise now, for I told the man right out she would give no statement to the press at all.”
“If only she would go away,” moaned Mrs. Maclean.
“I think she might—if you were to tell her that you simply can’t bear staying here in the circumstances, and that you will go with her,” said Dr. Maclean slowly.
As only answer his wife burst into sudden, sharp, short sobs.
“Why, what’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
“I can’t do it, Jock.” She was trying hard to regain her composure. “You mustn’t ask it of me! I don’t feel I can leave home just now. I know that my unhappiness is nothing to that poor child’s, but still, I am very unhappy.” The tears were running down her cheeks. “I suppose we’ve been very fortunate,” she sobbed, “more fortunate than I knew. Well, we’re paying for it now!”
“It’ll be all the same a hundred years hence,” he said lamely, “cheer up, woman!” And Mrs. Maclean wiped her eyes and did try to cheer up.
It is two o’clock in the morning, the darkest hour of the winter night, and Jean Bower is dreaming. In what she would describe as “a sort of a way” she knows she is dreaming, and yet, even so, she is filled with an awful sensation of foreboding and affright.