“Now you’re askin’!” exclaimed Mrs. Lightfoot. “But I’ll answer your question truly. Miss Cheale”—she fixed her eyes on Jean’s pale face—“Miss Cheale,” she repeated, “wants that man Garlett to know she’s saved ’im. Then she thinks ’e’ll give up that girl Bower—and maybe marry ’er.”
“Marry her?” repeated Jean. “How d’you mean?”
“Miss Cheale,” said Mrs. Lightfoot, “is sweet on that villain ’erself. That’s been plain to me for a long time. If not, why take on so? She saved the man’s arm, ’cordin’ to ’er account, when she was a nurse in France, and now she means to save ’is life. She’s a deep one!”
“Then she says she saw a stranger in the Thatched House?” asked Jean. She was beginning to understand much that had seemed oddly mysterious last night.
“That’s what she’s going to say, at any rate. One thing I will tell you, Bet Chart. She do honestly believe Garlett didn’t do it. She said so again to me last night. Funny, wasn’t it? She says to me: ‘They say they’ve found the place where Mr. Garlett bought the poison. ’E never did buy any poison.’”
“You mean the thing that appeared in The Sunday Critic?” said the girl.
“Yes, that’s what I do mean—but ’owever did you know it?”
“I saw the paper. A friend I stayed with the night before I came here bought it, and showed me the paragraph.”
Night and day the hidden drama went on—with the vast, dark, melancholy old house as background.
From the moment she went up to bed Jean Bower became intensely herself—that is, the unhappy, agonizingly anxious girl who was engaged to a man whom the whole world regarded as a murderer.