“What,” he thought, as he contemplated Mattie’s heavy, clouded, patient features, her corrugated brow, her thick nose, “what am I aiming at, meddling with these people’s lives? I do it with the same voracity with which I eat honey or trample over grass. I’m driven to it as if I were an omophagous demon! Is this the sort of thing my father did⁠—that scoundrel with his ‘happy life’?”

He was interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of a bell downstairs, followed by the opening of a door and by unsteady steps in the hall.

Mattie jumped to her feet and stood listening, intent and anxious.

“I believe that’s Father!” she cried. “But why did he ring? He never rings. Excuse me, Wolf, I must run down.”

She opened the door, but remained still listening, as also did Olwen, with wide-open startled eyes, a thin arm thrown round Wolf’s neck.