She looked at Miss Prince, and Miss Prince nodded, gravely:
“Harry Garlett was exceedingly anxious that the burial should take place two days earlier than it did,” said the clergyman impressively. “This fact, to which I now attach a sinister significance, was the more ominous because, instead of raising the question himself, he got Miss Cheale to do so. Miss Cheale and that queer, sickly brother of hers came and asked me if the funeral could take place on the Thursday instead of on the Saturday. Miss Cheale said that Garlett was anxious to have the funeral as soon as possible. But that again”—he turned to Miss Prince—“is a thing I naturally do not wish made public. The wretched man will be condemned on direct, not circumstantial, evidence, unless I’m much mistaken.”
“I suppose he will,” said Miss Prince.
Then she got up to go. She had enjoyed every moment of her visit, save during the short discussion as to the forced Alpine strawberries.
Lucy Warren was moving about her little kitchen trying to make work for herself. She was miserable with the dull dogged misery bred of hope deferred. Since the night she had seen Guy Cheale disappear through the drawing room window of the Thatched House, she had only had one short interchange of words with him.
Months had gone by since then, and yet to Lucy Warren the wounds inflicted on her pride as well as on her heart were still open wounds. She was of course excited and interested in the question of Mrs. Garlett’s death, but to her the one thing that mattered was the mystery of Guy Cheale’s disappearance out of her life.
This afternoon the man she had come to love was very present to her mind. She seemed to see his keen, mocking face rise up before her. It was as if his heavy-lidded gray eyes—eyes that could be at once so cruel and so tender, were following her about.
Her feelings toward Agatha Cheale had undergone no change—in fact, when that young lady had stayed at the Thatched Cottage—Lucy had quietly told Miss Prince that she would not meet her, and Miss Prince had allowed Lucy’s sister to take her place for the time. Often since then, poor Lucy had regretted that she had not forced herself to stay and face her enemy. She would, maybe, have learned something as to Guy Cheale and his condition; she might even have had the good fortune to discover his address.
As these thoughts were drifting through her mind, there came at the back door a curious, furtive, uncertain knock.
With a strange sense of foreboding at her heart, she went and unlatched the door, and for a moment she thought the slight woman whose face was swathed in a long motor veil a stranger.