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“fluttered,” it rarely achieved the required number of beats per minute for which she was constantly testing it. She frequently had a touch of heartburn or there was a numb freezing feeling all round it. In a fit of exasperation I once said: “You have a most accommodating heart, Aunt Matilda.” And for a moment she thought that was a new kind of disease and was quite cheered.
    So between the self-righteous virtue of Aunt Caroline and the hypochondriacal fancies of Aunt Matilda I was far from content.
    I wanted the old security and love which I had taken for granted, but it was more than that. Since my adventure in the mist I would never be the same again. I thought constantly of that encounter which seemed to be growing more and more unreal in my mind as time passed but was none the less vivid for that. I went over every detail that had happened: his face in the candlelight, those gleaming eyes, that grip on my hand, the feel of his fingers on my hair. I thought of the door handle slowly turning and I wondered what would have happened if Hildegarde had not warned me to bolt it.
    Sometimes when I awoke in my room I would imagine I was in the hunting lodge and was bitterly disappointed when I looked round my room and saw the wallpaper with the blue roses, the white ewer and basin, the straight wooden chair and the text on the wall which said “Forget yourself and live for others,” and which had been put there by Aunt Caroline. The picture which had always been there still remained. A golden-haired child in a flowing white dress was dancing along a narrow cliff path beside which was a long drop onto the rocks below. Beside the child was an angel. The title was
The Guardian Angel.
The girl’s flowing dress was not unlike the nightdress I had worn in the hunting lodge; and although I did not possess the pretty featuresof the child and my hair was not golden, and Hildegarde did not resemble the angel in the least, I associated the picture with us both. She had been my guardian angel for I had been ready to plunge to disaster—ably assisted by my wicked baron who had dressed himself up in the guise of Siegfried to deceive me. It was like one of the forest fairy tales. I would never forget him. I wanted to see him again. If I had a wishbone again, my wish—in spite of my guardian angel—would still be: Let me see him again.
    That was the main cause of my discontent. There was a quality about him which no one else had. It fascinated me so much that I was ready to face any danger to experience it again.
    So how could I settle down to this dreary existence?
    Mr. Clees had come next door with Miss Amelia Clees. They were pleasant and kind and I often went into the bookshop to see them. Miss Clees knew a great deal about books and it was for her sake that Mr. Clees had bought the shop. “So that I shall have a means of livelihood when he is gone,” she told me. Sometimes they came to dine with us and Aunt Matilda was quite interested in Mr. Clees because he had confided to her that he had only one kidney.
    That Christmas Day was dreary. The Cleeses had not yet taken possession of the shop and I had to spend the time with Aunt Caroline and Aunt Matilda. There were no trees, and our presents to each other had to be useful. There were no roasted chestnuts, no ghost stories round the fire, no legends of the forest, no stories of my father’s undergraduate days; nothing but an account of the good deeds Aunt Caroline used to perform for the poor in her Somerset village and from Aunt Matilda the effects of too rich feeding on the digestive organs. I realized that the reason they were more intimate with each other than they were with anyone else was that they never listened to each other and they carried on a conversation independently of each other. I would listen idly.
    â€œWe did what we could for them but it’s no use helping people like that.”
    â€œCongestion of the liver.