“But you still loved her, didn’t you, Dad?” she asked. “I was very little at the time, but I can just remember. You seemed so happy together. Till her illness came.” They talked without looking at one another. They did not speak about themselves.!

They had tea at an old-fashioned inn beside a stream. It was a favourite resort in summer time, but now they had it to themselves. The wind had played pranks with her hair and he found a mirror and knelt before her, holding it. “Much as Rome took Savonarola,” thought Madge.

“Tell me,” she said. “If it had been the photo of a woman with a bony throat and a beaky nose would you have read them?” Mary smiled. “But why shouldn’t the good newspaper proprietor hurry up and become a multi-proprietor?” she suggested. “Why don’t you persuade Lord Sutcliffe to buy up three or four papers, before they’re all gone?” One evening it struck him that the milk-pail, standing just inside the window, had been tampered with. Next day he marked with a scratch the inside of the pan and, returning later, found the level of the milk had sunk half an inch. So he hid himself and waited; and at twilight the next day the window was stealthily pushed open, and two small, terror-haunted eyes peered round the room. They satisfied themselves that no one was about and a tiny hand clutching a cracked jug was thrust swiftly in and dipped into the pan; and the window softly closed.