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