nd there's the wagonette from the Crown
and Bells waiting to take you there."

A few minutes later, the luggage precariously piled up on the box-seat
beside the driver, they were ambling through the leafy Devon lanes at
an unhurried pace apparently dictated by the somewhat ancient quadruped
between the shafts. The driver swished his whip negligently above the
animal's broad back, but presumably more with the idea of keeping off
the flies than with any hope of accelerating his speed. There would be
no other train to meet at Ashencombe until the down mail, due four
hours later, so why hurry? No one ever appears to be in a hurry in the
leisurely West Country--a refreshing characteristic in a world elsewhere
so perforated by tubes and shaken by the ubiquitous motor-bus.

Magda leaned back in the wagonette with a sigh of pleasure. The drowsy,
sunshiny peace of the July afternoon seemed very far removed from the
torrid rush and roar of the previous day in London.

It was almost like entering another world. Instead of the crowded,
wood-paved streets, redolent of petrol, this winding ribbon of a lane
where the brambles and tufted grass leaned down from close-set hedges to
brush the wheels of the carriage as it passed. Overhead, a restful sky
of misty blue flecked with wisps of white cloud, while each inconsequent
turn of the narrow twisting road revealed a sudden glimpse of distant
purple hills, or a small friendly cottage built of cob and crowned with
yellow thatch, or high-hedged fields of standing corn, deepening to gold
and quiveringly still as the sea on a windless afternoon.

At last the wagonette swung round an incredibly sharp turn and rumbled
between two granite posts--long since denuded of the gate which had once
swung between them--pulling up in front of a low, two-storied house,
which seemed to convey a pleasant sense of welcome, as some houses do.

The casement windows stood wide open and through them you caught
glimpses of white curtains looped back with lavender ribbons. Roses,
pink and white and red, nodded their heads to you from the walls, even
peering out impertinently to catch the sun from beneath the eaves of the
roof, whose thatch had mellowed to a somber brown with wind and weather.
Above the doorway trails of budding honeysuckle challenged the supremacy
of more roses in their summer prime, and just within, in the cool shadow
of the porch, stood a woman's slender figure.

Gillian never forgot that fi