CHAPTER XXII

A week later Enid Crofton lay in her drawing-room on the one couch which The Trellis House contained.  She looked very charming in her new guise of invalid.

Several people had already called to know how she was, including Jack Tosswill and his father, but no visitor had yet been admitted.  Now it was past four, and she was expecting the doctor—­also, she hoped, in due course, Godfrey Radmore.  That was why she had come downstairs, after having had an early cup of tea in her bedroom, and lain herself on the sofa.

The door opened, and as his burly form came through the door, Dr. O’Farrell told himself that he had seldom if ever attended such an attractive looking patient!  She was still very pale, for the shock had been great; but to-day, for the first time since her widowhood, she had put on a pink silk jacket, and it supplied the touch of colour which was needed by her white cheeks.  She had made up her mind that even a little rouge would be injudicious, but she had just used her lip-stick.  It was pleasant to know that she had every right to be an interesting invalid with all an interesting invalid’s privileges.

And yet, well acquainted as she was with the turns and twists of masculine human nature, Mrs. Crofton would have been surprised to know how suddenly repelled was the genial Irishman when she exclaimed eagerly:—­“I do hope that horrible cat has been killed!  Didn’t I hear you say that you meant to shoot her yourself?”

It was not without a touch of sly satisfaction that Dr. O’Farrell answered:—­“That was my intention certainly, Mrs. Crofton.  But I was frustrated.  The cat and her kittens vanished—­just entirely away!”

“Vanished?” she exclaimed.  “Then perhaps someone else has killed her?”

“Bless you, no.  I’m afraid that the brute has still got her nine lives before her!  She was spirited away by that broth of a boy.  Timmy Tosswill’s a good hater and a good lover, and that’s the truth of it!  I wasn’t a bit surprised when I got the news that my services wouldn’t be wanted—­that the cat wasn’t any longer at Old Place.”

“D’you mean you don’t know what’s happened to the horrible creature?” she exclaimed vexedly.

“That’s just what I do mean, Mrs. Crofton.  That smart little fellow just spirited the creature away.”

As he spoke, sitting with his back to the window, he was observing his pretty patient very closely.  She had reddened angrily and was biting her lips.  What a little vixen she was, to be sure!  And suddenly she saw what he was thinking.

“I’d like to put a question to you, Mrs. Crofton.”

“Do!” she insisted, but his question, when it came, displeased her.

“Is it true that that wasn’t the first time you’d had an unpleasant experience with an animal at Old Place?”

Dr. O’Farrell had not meant to ask his patient this question to-day, but he really felt curious to know the truth concerning something Godfrey Radmore had told him that morning.