She took his hand and squeezed it.
“You’ve never made anybody happier than you’ve made me to-day,” she said.
When Jean Bower slipped quietly back into Bonnie Doon, she amazed them all—those three kind folk who felt so unhappy and anxious about her, her uncle, her aunt, and Elsie—by being bright, cheerful, and full of courage and hope.
After a few minutes she went up to her bedroom. The writing table there was one of the few things she had brought from her old home. She went over it, and taking up an envelope, slipped Harry Garlett’s letter inside it. Then she wrote outside: “In case of my death I wish this envelope to be put in my coffin, over my heart”—and then she placed it in a drawer where she knew it would be found at once, should she die while still an inmate of the house where she had known such intense joy and such bitter sorrow.
After the first burst of excitement following the day of Harry Garlett’s appearance before the magistrates and his being committed for trial, all mention of the Terriford Mystery dropped gradually out of the newspapers; for weeks, sometimes even months, elapse between the committal of a man charged with murder and the actual opening of the legal drama which is to decide whether he is to enjoy life and freedom, or suffer a hideous and shameful death.
But though from the point of view of the public the case temporarily disappeared, there were still innumerable men and women all over England who seemed to find it impossible to banish the story from their minds. Many of the people with whom Jean had drifted into acquaintance during her life, and especially during the course of her war work, wrote to her with either strong interest or sympathy. But she received other letters of a very different character, and terrible letters some of them were, so venomous and cruel in their wording that they seemed as if inspired by personal hatred. A typical example ran as follows:
Wicked Woman,
My husband’s love has been taken away from me by his typist, so I know exactly what poor Mrs. Garlett must have felt during that time when you were insidiously worming your way into the heart of your employer. Your conduct was the more horrible because, as is the case with my husband, that brute, Garlett, owed everything to his wife. I am eagerly looking forward to the day when you will stand in the witness box and all your sins be brought to light, also to the day when he will be hung.
Your evil wisher,
A Deserted Wife.