He walked through the garden gate and up the cinder path, carrying Alice in his arms. She clung to him, hiding her face against his neck so that nothing could be seen of her except her long golden hair hanging down the back of her blue velvet jacket.

John Wytham’s greeting of Emilie, his eldest daughter, had been robust and characteristic.

‘Well, Emilie – got yourself a husband yet?’

Emilie might have replied to him in many different ways. She might have said that being the illegitimate result of a union between an English painter and the daughter of a French farmer was not exactly an asset when it came to marriage. She might have told him that the only men she met in this obscure if beautiful part of Brittany were peasants and farmers, none of whom interested her because her English blood made her unduly fastidious. She might have replied that, if he could only be unselfish enough to remember that a French girl needs a dowry, she might find a husband, but that with what money he had given her mother these past ten years they could not have kept an animal alive.

But Emilie, tongue-tied as she always was in her father’s presence, could only answer his question with a stammered,

‘N – no – F – Father !’

John Wytham pinched her cheek, and surrendering to his charm she smiled at him.

‘And you are over thirty! It’s time you hurried up and got a lover or you will be too late. Where’s your Mother?’

‘Inside.’

Without another word he passed her and went into the house. Emilie followed him into the big, oak-beamed kitchen.

Her mother had been cooking supper, and there was a savoury smell coming from the pots and pans on the hearth. Marie Riguad’s face was flushed from the fire and her hair, now beginning to turn grey, was untidy, but her figure was slim as a girl’s and when she saw who stood there her voice rang out joyously, eager and excited as a young child’s.

‘John!’

‘Yes, John! Are you surprised to see me after all these years’?’

‘It is only four years since you last visited us, and I knew you would come again.’

‘You did, did you? And you were right. I have brought someone with me.’

Very gently he set Alice down on the table. She gave an inarticulate murmur and continued to hide her face against him.

‘This is Alice,’ he said briefly to Marie.

‘I guessed that,’ she answered. ‘You spoke of her the last time you were here. You said your wife’s parents were looking after her.’