For the first month, as one always does in Devon, she had walked herself to the verge of scragginess, then had gradually put on weight, as is the correct method.  Her whistle could be heard in the woods and fields, and on the beach from Lee to Hartland way; all the country folk loved her, and scolded her for the risks she took in swimming, and she seemingly had no care in the world.

But the great heat of summer, the shriek of the wind, and the scream of the birds in autumn would bring a little pucker between her brows; the storm would drive her spirits up to breaking point, the calm would leave her eyes full of trouble; in the woods she would stop and turn to listen, then frown and trudge along between the trees.

She was not at rest, for an unconfessed fear, a spook without name or shape, was plucking at her will-power and her heart, a phantom of which she would rather have died than have said one word.

So she stood twisting the blind cord and watching the rocks as they gradually disappeared under the swirling waters.

Susan Hetth sat near the fire, which is oft-times necessary in the spring at Lee, and tapped in irritation, and most irritatingly, with her foot against the low fender.

She was worried.

She was not by birth or heredity a bad-tempered woman, merely one of straw, who after the first two months of every quarter invariably found herself in a corner which one injudicious move might render uncomfortably tight.

Her financial situation, in fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager’s demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in the no-man’s-land of Earls Court.

Then Fate crossed her knees, and out of her lap had tumbled a widower possessed of a substantial banking account and four children.

A few more days, a little more encouragement, and he would most certainly have offered her his name and the half of his worldly goods in return for her help in quelling the riotous behaviour of his motherless brood.

But there had supervened the crisis at school.

And grasping for once in her life the necessity of immediate action if she wished to prevent an embellished account of her niece’s untoward behaviour from reaching the man’s ears, she had fled to Devon, leaving behind a trail of dainty scented notes explaining that it was all on account of a slight nervous breakdown from overstudy on the part of her niece “who,” she added casually, “as I think I told you, is the only daughter of my dear brother, Colonel Hetth, V.C.”

Snobbish, but quite effective as bait for a person who has not complete control over the eighth letter of the alphabet.

That very morning, quite unheedful of the beauties of the little witch village, she had gone to collect her mail lying at the post office, which in summer is almost hidden in its garden of flowers; and amongst an assortment of spring sale catalogues from emporiums, mostly situated in South Kensington, had found a letter from the widower, begging to be allowed to come down for a change of air, and an opportunity of laying a proposition before her.