‘She had given her captors the slip?’

‘She had never been captured. Her wandering away had been caused by a sudden and complete loss of memory. She usually dressed in the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising that she should have imagined that she was one, and still less that people should accept her statement and help her to get work. She had wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found fairly steady employment there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting people’s rooms in order counter- balancing her obstinate and domineering characteristics. It was the shock of being patronizingly addressed as “my good woman” by a curate, who was disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a parish concert hall, that led to the sudden restoration of her memory. “I think you forget who you are speaking to,” she observed crushingly, which was rather unduly severe, considering she had only just remembered it herself.’

‘But,’ exclaimed the Journalist, ‘the Lofoden Island people! Who had they got hold of?’

‘A purely mythical prisoner. It was an attempt in the first place by some one who knew something of the domestic situation, probably a discharged valet, to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberleigh before the missing woman turned up; the subsequent yearly instalments were an unlooked-for increment to the original haul.

‘Crispina found that the eight years’ interregnum had materially weakened her ascendency over her now grown-up offspring. Her husband, however, never accomplished anything great in the political world after her return; the strain of trying to account satisfactorily for an unspecified expenditure of sixteen thousand pounds spread over eight years sufficiently occupied his mental energies. Here is Belgrad and another Custom house.’