A narrow stone path led up to the door of the house, which resembled a doll’s house, brilliantly painted with blues and greens. Blue and white hyacinths grew in masses on either side of the path; and their scent, caught and suspended in that enclosed space, had a fainting, ecstatic voluptuousness which was at variance with the prim neatness around them. A diminutive servant, very old but very alert, with the nervous outward-staring eyes of a yellowhammer, opened the door to him, and without demur ushered him into the drawing-room.

He gave his name and waited. Almost immediately the little servant came back and begged him to take a chair and make himself comfortable. Miss Gault would see him in a few minutes. Those few minutes lengthened themselves into a quarter of an hour, and he had time to meditate on all the possibilities of this strange encounter. Miss Gault was the daughter of the late Headmaster of Ramsgard; and Wolf had heard his mother for twenty-five years utter airy sarcasms at her expense. It appeared she had had some tender relation with his father; had even attended William Solent’s deathbed in the workhouse and seen him buried in the cemetery.