The Rectory lay at the further extremity of the village, which was long and straggling.  The village street, still bathed in sun, was full of groups of holiday makers, idling and courting.  To avoid them, Buntingford stepped into one of his own plantations, in which there was a path leading straight to the back of the Rectory.

He walked like one half-stunned, with very little conscious thought.  As to the blow which had now fallen, he had lived under the possibility of it for fourteen years.  Only since the end of the war had he begun to feel some security, and in consequence to realize a new ferment in himself.  Well—­now at least he would know.  And the hunger to know winged his feet.

He found a gate leading into the garden of the Rectory open, and went through it towards the front of the house.  A figure in grey flannels, with a round collar, was pacing up and down the little grass-plot there, waiting for him.

John Alcott came forward at sight of him.  He took Buntingford’s hand in both his own, and looked into his face.  “Is it true?” he said, gently.

“Probably,” said Buntingford, after a moment.

“Will you come into my study?  I think you ought to hear our story before you see her.”

He led the way into the tiny house, and into his low-roofed study, packed with books from floor to ceiling, the books of a lonely man who had found in them his chief friends.  He shut the door with care, suggesting that they should speak as quietly as possible, since the house was so small, and sound travelled so easily through it.

“Where is she?” said Buntingford, abruptly, as he took the chair Alcott pushed towards him.

“Just overhead.  It is our only spare room.”

Buntingford nodded, and the two heads, the black and the grey, bent towards each other, while Alcott gave his murmured report.

“You know we have no servant.  My sister does everything, with my help, and a village woman once or twice a week.  Lydia came down this morning about seven o’clock and opened the front door.  To her astonishment she found a woman leaning against the front pillar of our little porch.  My sister spoke to her, and then saw she must be exhausted or ill.  She told her to come in, and managed to get her into the dining-room where there is a sofa.  She said a few incoherent things after lying down and then fainted.  My sister called me, and I went for our old doctor.  He came back with me, said it was collapse, and heart weakness—­perhaps after influenza—­and that we must on no account move her except on to a bed in the dining-room till he had watched her a little.  She was quite unable to give any account of herself, and while we were watching her she seemed to go into a heavy sleep.  She only recovered consciousness about five o’clock this evening.  Meanwhile I had been obliged to go to a diocesan meeting at Dansworth and I left my sister and Dr. Ramsay in charge of her, suggesting