Marigold’s one eye grew pensive and sad.

“And they call this,” said he, “a free country!”

I began this chapter by remarking that for a week or two after my second interview with Randall Holmes, nothing particular happened.  Then one afternoon came Sir Anthony Fenimore to see me, and with a view to obtaining either my advice or my sympathy, reopened the story of his daughter Althea found drowned in the canal eleven months before.

What he considered a most disconcerting light had just been cast on the tragedy by Maria Beccles.  This lady was Lady Fenimore’s sister.  A deadly feud, entirely of Miss Beccles’ initiating and nourishing, had existed between them for years.  They had been neither on speaking nor on writing terms.  Miss Beccles, ten years Lady Fenimore’s senior, was, from all I had heard, a most disagreeable and ill-conditioned person, as different from my charming friend Edith Fenimore as the ugly old sisters were from Cinderella.  Although she belonged to a good old South of England family, she had joined, for reasons known only to herself, the old Free Kirk of Scotland, found a congenial Calvinistic centre in Galloway, and after insulting her English relations and friends in the most unconscionable way, cut herself adrift from them for ever.  “Mad as a hatter,” Sir Anthony used to say, and, never having met the lady, I agreed with him.  She loathed her sister, she detested Anthony, and she appeared to be coldly indifferent to the fact of the existence of her nephew Oswald.  But for Althea, and for Althea alone, she entertained a curious, indulgent affection, and every now and then Althea went to spend a week or so in Galloway, where she contrived to obtain considerable amusement.  Aunt Maria did both herself and her visitors very well, said Althea, who had an appreciative eye for the material blessings of life.  Althea walked over the moors and fished and took Aunt Maria’s cars out for exercise and, except whistle on the Sabbath, seemed to do exactly what she liked.

Now, in January 1914, Althea announced to her parents that Aunt Maria had summoned her for a week to Galloway.  Sir Anthony stuffed her handbag with five-pound notes, and at an early hour of the morning sent her up in the car to London in charge of the chauffeur.  The chauffeur returned saying that he had bought Miss Althea’s ticket at Euston and seen her start off comfortably on her journey.  A letter or two had been received by the Fenimores from Galloway, and letters they had written to Galloway had been acknowledged by Althea.  She returned to Wellingsford in due course, with bonny cheeks and wind-swept eyes, and told us all funny little stories about Aunt Maria.  No one thought anything more about it until one fine afternoon in May, 1915, when Maria Beccles walked unexpectedly into the drawing-room of Wellings Park, while Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore were at tea.

“My dear Edith,” she said to her astounded hostess, who had not seen her for fifteen years.  “In this orgy of hatred and strife that is going on in the world, it seems ridiculous to go on hating and fighting one’s own family.  We must combine against the Germans and hate them.  Let us be friends.”