Imprudence by Ethel Mills

Mr Edward Morgan arrived on the following afternoon. Prudence watched him from the window disentangling himself from the carriage rugs, and fussing with the muffler which he wore wound carefully about his throat. The wind was in the north-east, and he was subject to bronchitis.

Swathed in wraps he did not cut a romantic figure: he looked what he was, a prosperous, middle-aged man who valued his health and refrained from taking liberties with it. Prudence told herself that he was wise to be cautious, at the same time she wished that he was of an age at which such caution was unnecessary.