By noon on Monday my bags were packed and secured, all my possessions crammed into them, as I waited with impatience for the cab that was to take me to Victoria. The half-past-twelve train was prompt to the minute. Seated in the dining car, I watched the houses of Pimlico and Balharn speed past. Soon we were out in the countryside of Croydon and Purley, trees and hedges flashing by.

By breaking into old Silas Raven's fifty sovs, I sported a bottle of Chateau Rothschild and a first-rate spread. I sniffed my post-prandial brandy and smoked a cigar as we pulled in towards Lewes under the graceful curve of the Sussex downs. By three o'clock I stood on the platform at Pinebourne, breathing in the clean sharp air of the sea, which lay just beyond the town.

I knew Miss Martinet at first glance. She was quite tall, and smartly dressed with a look which one calls "handsome." Nearer thirty-five than forty, she wore her brown hair in a somewhat old-fashioned coiffure. Her manner was well educated and pleasant. She might equally well have been a young widow or, as proved to be the case, a lively minded spinster with a predilection for bending wayward young women to her will.

We drove together in the dogcart, exchanging pleasantries. Pinebourne was an agreeable place, I supposed, with its tree-lined shopping streets and its elegant, broad-paved Marine Parade. The freshly painted pier, the bandstand, the ornamental gardens with their yellow blooms in flower, lay beside a quiescent sea.

Would you imagine Greystones as some grim fortress of vengeance, Lizzie? How wrong you would be! Though surrounded by a high wall, which the nimblest damsel would never scale, the house and grounds were delightful. The house itself accommodated thirty penitent Magdalens, as old Silas Raven might call them, though their misdemeanours were more varied than the term implies. This extensive villa was light and airy, fronting onto ornamental grounds. Beyond the kitchen gardens at the rear stood the stable block with its little clock tower. To one side of the grounds rose the smooth turf of the downs, whose cliffs fell sheer to the tide. On the other side there was a gentle slope, where the resinous smells of warm pine led down to the rippling waters of the bay.