The Welsh Adventure by Viola Bayley.
 
To help her aunt Georgie, Serena Hamble comes to her big Welsh home, Craigwen House, bringing with her her friend Jeannie Wright, who tells the story.
 
Aunt Georgie enjoys giving free holidays at Craigwen to people who need and deserve them but could not otherwise afford them, but Jeannie finds the guests in turn pathetic, lonely, and often puzzlingand mysterious. The Rev. Austin Grange, for instance: who was he? She found it hard to believe that he was the hard-working vicar of a dockland parish he claimed to be. Then over at the nearby farm lived the formidable Mrs. Reece, and her grandson Owen (in love with Serena as she is in love with him). Hard, unsmiling Mrs. Reece keeps Owen on a very tight rein, although the talk was she had had a son.
The daughter had adopted a six-month-old baby, the boy Owen, and when she died, Mrs. Reece had made him her responsibility. The son, on the other according to local gossip, drowned himself in the lake.
 
Over the quiet valley hangs some mystery centreing on the Reece farm.
What is behind the chain of strange but frightening incidents? Someone in Aunt Georgie's household of unconventional guests must know the answer? But who?
Once again the author sets up her interesting array of nicely contrasted characters, against a colourful and romantic background.
 
Illustrated by Marcia Lane Foster