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 known one another always I mean that she's always known about me. I used to take her on my knee and toss her up and down. That was where all the trouble began. If she hadn't been always used to me and fancied that I was years older than she—a kind of grandfather—she'd have married me."

"Married you!" Harkness brought out.

"Yes. I can't remember a time when I wasn't in love with her. I always was, and she never was with me. She liked me—she likes me now—but she's always been so used to the idea of me. I've always been David Dunbar—and that's all. A friend who was always there but nothing more. There was just a moment when I was missing for six months in the middle of the war, I think she really cared then—but soon they heard that I was safe in Germany and it was all as it had been before."

"Were her father and mother living?" Harkness asked.

"Her father. Her mother died when her youngest brother was born, when she was only six years old. The mother's death upset the father, and he took to drink. He'd always been inclined that way I expect. He was too brilliant a doctor to have landed in that small village without there being some reason. Well, after Mrs. Tobin's death there was simply one trouble after another. Tobin's patients deserted him. The big house on the hill