The hall-porter was on duty. When he saw Miss Emily he pressed a bell-push on his desk and rose with a serviceable smirk. ‘Can I help you, madam?’ he asked.

‘In so far as I require admission to the enclosure, I believe you may. I understand that entry is effected by means of some plaque or token,’ said Miss Emily.

He opened a drawer and extracted a metal disc. ‘I shall require,’ she said, ‘seven,’ and laid two half-crowns and a florin on the desk. The hall-porter completed the number.

‘No, no, no!’ Major Barrimore expostulated, bouncing out from the interior. ‘We can’t allow this. Nonsense!’ He waved the hall-porter away. ‘See that a dozen of these things are sent up to Miss Pride’s suite,’ he said and bent gallantly over his guest. ‘I’m so sorry! Ridiculous!’

‘You are very good,’ she rejoined, ‘but I prefer to pay.’ She opened her reticule, swept the discs into it and shut it with a formidable snap. ‘Thank you,’ she said dismissing the hall-porter. She prepared to leave.

‘I don’t approve,’ Major Barrimore began, ‘I – really, it’s very naughty of you. Now, may I – as it’s your first visit since – may I just show you the easiest way?’

‘I have, I think, discovered it from the literature provided and need not trespass upon your time, Major Barrimore. I am very much obliged to you.’ Something in her manner, or perhaps a covert glance from his employer, had caused the hall-porter to disappear. ‘In respect of my letter,’ Miss Emily said, with a direct look at the Major, ‘I would suggest that we postpone any discussion until I have made myself fully conversant with prevailing conditions on my property. I hope this arrangement is convenient?’

‘Anything!’ he cried. ‘Naturally. Anything! But I do hope –’

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Emily and left him.

The footpath from the hotel to the Spring followed, at an even level, the contour of an intervening slope. It was wide and well-surfaced and, as she had read in one of the brochures, amply provided for the passage of a wheeled chair. She walked along it at a steady pace, looking down as she did so at Fisherman’s Bay, the cottages, the narrow strip of water and a not very distant prospect of the village. A mellow light lay across the hillside; there was a prevailing scent of sea and of bracken. A lark sang overhead. It was very much the same sort of afternoon as that upon which, two years ago, Wally Trehern had blundered up the hillside to the Spring. Over the course he had so blindly taken there was now a well-defined, tar-sealed, and tactfully graded route which converged with Miss Emily’s footpath at the entrance to the Spring.