Marry a Stranger by Susan Barrie

only been broken by a stop for dinner. He went round to pull the bell-chain, but before he reached it the door opened and a tall, thin woman stood framed against a background of highly polished oak furniture and oak-lined walls bathed in the mellow rays of discreetly shaded electric light.
    “So you’ve arrived, Martin!” said the woman quietly, and kept her hands locked together over the front of her faded, flowered-silk evening gown, which she wore with an equally faded velvet bridge coat as a protection against the slight chill of the evening.
    “Hello, Jane!” Dr. Guelder exclaimed. He gave her his most attractive smile, the kind which softened his eyes and lifted that one dark eyebrow a little, and then held out his hand. She gave him hers after the barest half-second or so of hesitation, but her thin, colorless features remained unredeemed by any sign of a smile. “I expect my telegram gave you a bit of a shock, didn’t it? But my letter, when it reached you, must have explained everything more satisfactorily.”
    “Your letter explained everything quite satisfactorily,” she answered, with emphasis on the one word.
    “Good!” he exclaimed, rather more curtly. “Then you’re all ready to receive us?”
    “I'm as ready as the short amount of notice you gave me has permitted me to be,” she told him without altering her tone. She looked towards the car, and the shadowy outline of Stacey’s head inside it. “Your wife—Mrs. Guelder has probably found it a tiring journey?”
    Stacey opened the car door quietly, and descended just as quietly on to the gravel of the driveway. Martin, as if suddenly conscious of her, turned to her quickly and lightly laid hold of her arm. He drew her to the foot of the steps and presented her to his cousin, or his former cousin, that is, by his earlier marriage.
    “Jane, this is Fountains’ new mistress—and Stacey, this is Miss Fountain, who has looked after the place all the time I’ve been in London. She’s particularly fond of it because it was once her own home. In fact, she’s lived here all her life—or very nearly!”
    “I was brought to this house when I was two years old,” Jane Fountain told Stacey with an icy note in her voice. “I came as an orphan and I stayed as a much-loved daughter. I grew up here under the happiest circumstances, and therefore I think it is little to be wondered at that I have a great love for the place.’
    “Why, of course not,” Stacey answered, and although she was so tired that she could have swayed on her feet she did genuinely understand the other ’ s attitude—the defensive attitude of one who was afraid that her days were numbered, and that something treasured and valued was likely to be crested from her. She smiled at her uncertainly in the light streaming out from the hall, but there was no answering smile on Jane Fountain s face, and she did not even move aside from the doorway to permit this white-faced stranger to enter. But Martin Guelder, with tightened lips and eyes that took in all of his bride’s fatigue, all but carried her up the steps and into the brightness of the hall, and dragged forward an unyielding oak settle for her to sink down upon.
    Miss Fountain looked a little surprised when she got a better glimpse of the new Mrs. Guelder, so slight and obviously young that she might almost have been her new husband’s daughter. He, tall and elegant in his unprofessional and beautifully-cut grey suit, seemed to tower above her as he stood beside the settle, and he bent down and removed from her dark curls the little hat that was a mere cap of deeply purple pansies held together by a shred of ribbon and a wisp of veiling. Then he shook his head at the shadows under her eyes, and the pale lips from which every evidence of lipstick seemed to have vanished as if it had never been applied.
    “It’s bed for you, Mrs. Guelder, and almost at once,” he said crisply. He looked at the woman who had long considered