“Yes.”  She nodded smilingly.  “Is there a trap of any kind to meet us?”

Being a man as well as a porter he melted at once under Magda’s disarming smile, and replied with a sudden accession of amiability.

“Be you going to Stockleigh?” he asked.  The soft sing-song intonation common to all Devon voices fell very pleasantly on ears accustomed to the Cockney twang of London streets.

“Yes, to Storran of Stockleigh,” announced Coppertop importantly.

The porter’s mouth widened into an appreciative grin.

“That’s right, young master, and there’s the wagonette from the Crown and Bells waiting to take you there.”

A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped between the shafts.  The driver swished his whip negligently above the animal’s broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed.  There would be no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four hours later, so why hurry?  No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the leisurely West Country—­a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.

Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure.  The drowsy, sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.

It was almost like entering another world.  Instead of the crowded, wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed.  Overhead, a restful sky of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.

At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled between two granite posts—­long since denuded of the gate which had once swung between them—­pulling up in front of a low, two-storied house, which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses do.

The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons.  Roses, pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather.  Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow of the porch, stood a woman’s slender figure.