In a sense it was too much like a stage picture to please a really fine taste.  But to Enid Crofton it formed an ideal background for her attractive self.  She had sold for very high prices the sound, solid, fine, 18th century furniture, which her husband had inherited, and with the proceeds she had bought the less comfortable but to the taste of the moment, more attractive oak furnishings of The Trellis House.

Enid Crofton was the kind of woman who acquires helpful admirers in every profession.  The junior partner of the big firm of house-agents who had disposed of the lease of Fildy Fe Manor had helped her in every way possible, though he had been rather surprised and puzzled, considering that she knew no one there, at her determination to find a house in, or near, the village of Beechfield.

It was also an admirer, the only one who had survived from her war sojourn in Egypt—­a cheery, happy, good-looking soldier, called Tremaine, now at home on leave from India—­who had helped her in the actual task of settling in.  Not that there had been much settling in to do—­for the house had been left in perfect order by its last tenant.  But Captain Tremaine had fetched her from the hotel where she had stayed in London; he had bought her first-class ticket (Enid always liked someone to pay for her); they had shared a delightful picnic lunch which he provided in the train; and then, finally, reluctantly, he had left The Trellis House—­after a rather silly, tiresome, little scene, during which he had vowed that she should marry him, even if it came to his kidnapping her by force!

While hoping and waiting, in nervous suspense, for Godfrey Radmore, she cast a tender thought to Bob Tremaine.  Nothing, so she told herself with a certain vehemence, would induce her to marry him, for he had only L200 a year beside his pay, and that, even in India, she believed would mean poverty.  Also she had been told that no woman remained really pretty in India for very long.  But she was fond of Tremaine—­he was “her sort,” and far, far more her ideal of what a man should be than was the rich man she had deliberately made up her mind to marry; but bitter experience had convinced Enid Crofton that money—­plenty of money—­was as necessary to her as the air she breathed.

* * * * *

Suddenly there broke on her ear the peal of an old-fashioned bell, followed by a short, sharp knock on the toy knocker of her front door.  Enid started up, her face full of eagerness and pleasure; something seemed to tell her that it was—­it must be—­Radmore!

While the maid was going to the door, her mind worked quickly.  Surely it was very late for a call?  He must have been wishing to see her as soon as he possibly could, or he would never have managed to get away from Old Place, and its many tiresome inmates.  There came a mischievous smile over her face.  Of one of those inmates, the rather priggish Jack Tosswill, she had made a real conquest.  Under some flimsy excuse he had come every day, always staying for a considerable time.  This very morning he had not gone till she had told him frankly that she only had lunch enough for one!