Mrs. Emmeline Lucas was walking briskly and elegantly up and down the cinder path which traversed her kitchen garden and was so conveniently dry underfoot even after heavy rain. This house of hers called "Grebe" stood some quarter of a mile outside the ancient and enlightened town of Tilling on its hill away to the west; in front there stretched out the green pasture-land of the marsh flat and featureless as far as the line of sand-dunes along the shore. She had spent a busy morning divided about equally between practising a rather easy sonata by Mozart and reading a rather difficult play by Aristophanes. There was the Greek on one page and an excellent English translation on the page opposite and the play was so amusing that to-day she had rather neglected the Greek and pursued the English. At this moment she was taking the air to refresh her after her musical and intellectual labours and felt quite ready to welcome the sound of that tuneful set of little bells in the hall which would summon her to lunch.