Free A Case of Heart Trouble by Susan Barrie Page B

now it was flowing free and it had a pale primrose beauty in the morning light. Dr. Loring frowned at it at first, said she ought to wear a hat or a headscarf until the frosty chill died out of the atmosphere, and she obligingly produced a headscarf from her pocket and tied it under her chin.
    “That’s better,” he said. He touched the green tweed coat. “At least this is warm. You’d better put that window up on your side, and tell me if you feel a draft at any time. We’ll stop for some coffee in about an hour. By that time we should be well clear of London.”
    She lay back against the warm scarlet upholstery and sighed. The cream car was so superbly comfortable, there was a thick plaid rug over her knees; she took pleasure in watching Dr. Loring’s lean brown hands on the wheel, and she still couldn’t believe in her good luck in leaving London.
    “You mustn’t treat me as if I’m fragile, Doctor,” she remarked, after his display of concern for her
    well-being. “I’m a Cockney, you know, and Cockneys are notoriously tough.”
    “Some of them may be, but you are not,” he replied, almost curtly. His hand came out and rested lightly on her knee. “I want to offer you an apology, Dallas, for that last day at Loring—that day when you had tea with my cousin. If I hadn’t been in such a devil of a temper I wouldn’t have allowed you to be despatched so summarily back to London. It was the wrong time of year for you, I
    had other plans for you, and—”
    “Yes?” she said, quietly, waiting for him to go on. “Why did you dash off that day without giving me any warning that you intended to stay away for lunch, and not get back until five o’clock?” he
    asked curiously.
    She looked down at her gloved hands, lightly clutching one another in her lap.
    “I ... I think it was the arrival of your visitor,” she explained, at last. “She said she was Mrs. Loring, and I thought she was your wife, and I —I thought you would want to be alone with her.” “I— see,” he commented. There was silence for a moment, and then he asked: “But you know now that she was not my wife?”
    “Yes.” She glanced at him for a moment, and then away. “Matron told me yesterday.”
    “Only yesterday?” He was watching the road ahead very carefully. “That day you went to Oldthorpe what did you do, apart from have tea with my cousin?”
    “I—I wandered about. There wasn’t very much to do.”
    “But you preferred wandering about in an aimless fashion to meeting the woman you thought was my wife again at lunch? And perhaps hearing that she was going to stay on for a few days?”
    “Y-yes.” She bit her lip, moistened it with the tip of her tongue, and kept her eyes glued to the window on her side of the car.
    “And did it never strike you as odd that I didn’t mention a wife to you before?” His tone was a little
    dry. “What did you think I had done with her? Did you think we were separated?”
    “I suppose. I thought something of the kind.”
    “Hence the smack on the face that time when I kissed you?”
    She glanced round at him swiftly, and her face turned brilliantly, revealingly pink.
    “I’ve already apologized more than once for smacking your face.”
    “Yes, you have.” His tone was now queerly, quietly content. “And in addition you practically shed tears over me at the time! I’ve never forgotten how extraordinarily bright those tears looked welling up in your green eyes, Dallas! And one of them splashed over and ran down on to your hand! ”
    “D-did it?” she said, and looked down at the hand, now encased in a suede glove.
    “Yes. I ought to have saluted the hand as a sign that hostilities were over between us, oughtn't I?” glancing at her sideways and smiling at her with a gentleness that actually shook her. “Only fortunately they weren’t over, for not much more than a week afterwards I was calmly agreeing to your packing your bags and returning to London. And I went off