id the butler darkly.

THE PEARLS AND THE SWINE

CHAPTER I

Miss Markham in certain respects was a fortunate lady. She had a flat in
town and had recently acquired a little bungalow for week-end purposes
on a cliff that overlooked the sea. There are one or two other little
bungalows in the vicinity, and the people who own them do not give away
the name of the place; they fear the penalties of popularity.

Miss Markham had sufficient means and no worries; she was good-looking
enough for all practical purposes. She was forty-five years of age, had
never been engaged, had never even come within a mile of being engaged.

In her London flat Miss Markham was quite conventional, and kept the
usual servants; in the sacred privacy of her bungalow by the sea, she
kept no regular servants at all. An old woman who lived in the village
was paid to keep an eye on the place while Miss Markham was away, though
no one could have said precisely what good it had done the place to have
an eye kept there. The same old woman, when Miss Markham grew tired of
town and came down for the week-end, spent the day at the bungalow,
and--to use her own expression, which is not to be taken literally--"did
for her".

July in London was very hot that year. Miss Byles said that she would
only be too delighted to go down to the bungalow, at the place which may
not be mentioned, in company with Miss Markham. At the last moment Miss
Byles was compelled, by health, to break her engagement. She did
everything at the wrong time; she got hay fever at the wrong time;
therefore Miss Markham went down alone, and the old woman made some
perfunctory preparations for her, cooked an alleged dinner for her, and
made no secret of the fact that she regarded it as a grievance that she
should have to do anything whatever in return for the money which she
received.

Having done as little as possible, she returned, so to speak, to her
nest, and Miss Markham was left absolutely alone in the bungalow.

At ten o'clock that night Miss Markham, who was almost excessively
refined, had just put down her copy of Walter Pater's "Imaginary
Portraits", and was thinking of crossing the passage to go to bed. At
that moment, her attention was attracted by a gentle tap on her front
door: it was not the urgent, sharp, business tap of the Post Office; it
was the rippling, social tap. Miss Markham was not nervous; she looked
out of the window before deciding to open the doo