It was early in July, on one of those long summer evenings of which the melancholy¹ twilight² seems determined³ never to end, that Lilian, from Victoria Station, drove up to her late husband's house, now her own. The events leading to the arrival, and giving it a most poignant⁴ dramatic quality, had one after another as they occurred impressed everybody concerned as being very strange and sinister⁵; but seen in perspective they took on a rather ordinary complexion⁶.

 

At the very moment of leaving the Riviera Lilian had heard that Miss Grig, on her way to the South to see Felix, had been detained in Paris by serious ptomaine poisoning due to food eaten at home. Had Miss Grig been able to get a berth⁷ in the through Calais-Mediterranée express, she might well have died in the train; but she had not been able to get a berth, and had travelled by a service which necessitated⁸ crossing Paris by taxi. She never did cross Paris. Railway officials carried her to the Hôtel Terminus, and medical aid was obtained just in time. For several days she was lost, like a mislaid and helpless parcel in the international post. As soon as she could move again she returned home, for Felix was by then dead and buried.

 

Lilian, on her part, did travel towards London by the through Calais-Mediterranée express, alighting at Calais extremely exhausted⁹ after twenty-eight hours on the railway. A gale¹⁰ was raging in the Channel. The steamer failed to enter Dover, a

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