The sound of the car died away and was followed by a puff of wind. It shook the latched windows and made a rushing sound about the house.

Miss Adamson pulled herself together with a jerk and came into the room.

“Oh, Jenny my dear-” she said.

Jenny turned very slowly. There was only one thought in her mind. She said,

“It isn’t true. It-it can’t be true-not Garsty-”

Mrs. Forbes drove on to the house and beyond it. She put the car away, drew a long breath of the something accomplished something done sort, gathered up her parcels, locked the garage, and made her way to the front door. It was open, and Carter stood there peering out.

“Oh, ma’am,” she said, “-oh, ma’am, I’d have managed to keep it from them, because that was what I thought you’d want. But oh dear, what a dreadful thing!”‘

Mrs. Forbes was not paying very much attention. Carter was an emotional creature-it didn’t do to take too much notice of her. She came into the lighted hall and began to undo her coat. The lamp in the ceiling shone down upon her and showed a very handsome woman. Not young-she owned to being over fifty, but she was very well preserved. Her two boys had been born with only a year between them when she was twenty-eight, the two little girls not for fourteen years, during which time Major Forbes had been in the Army-though what use he could possibly be, she never pretended to understand. When he did return he was even more absent-minded than he had been before he went. He was Colonel Forbes now, that was all there was to it. He slipped easily enough into the life of the village, was on terms of politeness with his wife, of vague affection for his children and for Jenny. He had died unobtrusively two years before, and his eldest son Mac reigned in his stead.