“You will never let Mr. Garlett know that, will you?” she whispered.
He made no answer, and perhaps she saw by his expression that he was telling himself that even the most sensible women are sometimes foolishly sentimental, for a little colour came back into her face.
“Shall I go down and tell him—or will you?” she asked, in a voice that had suddenly become composed.
“I’ll tell him, of course.”
To his relief he saw her eyes become suffused with tears.
“We little thought yesterday morning that this would be the solution of your problem,” he said feelingly.
“It’s a horrible, horrible solution!” she exclaimed violently.
Again Dr. Maclean made no answer, for he did not, could not, agree with her. To his mind, the death of Mrs. Garlett was bound to turn out a blessing, not only to the young woman who had tended her so faithfully, if unlovingly, for over a year, but also to the dead woman’s husband.
Hard cases make bad law; Dr. Maclean was no advocate of easy divorce, but to his mind there was something intensely repellent in the marriage of a strong healthy man to a hopeless invalid. Deep down in his heart the honest Scotsman knew what would have happened to himself had he been in the shoes of Harry Garlett. He knew that his flesh and blood would not have borne such a difficult, unnatural situation, and he had long admired the young man’s straight, simple, clean way of life. Thanks to that dish of early strawberries, Harry Garlett would now be able to remake his life on happy, natural lines.
Slightly ashamed of such thoughts coming at such a time, he glanced at the young woman before him. Would she now become the real mistress of this delightful house? The doctor suspected she would make a try for it. But he could not help hoping that the newly made widower would in time meet with a happier fate than marriage with this secretive and, he suspected, very jealous-natured woman. Dr. Maclean liked Harry Garlett well enough to hope that, after a decent interval, this now mournful house would be filled with gay, wholesome, girlish laughter, and the patter of little feet.