reign inclination of the head over the flowers she was holding. Her
straight, curveless mouth became suddenly charming with the parting of
her lips over her white teeth, and left the impress of the smile in a
lighting of the whole face even after it had passed. Then she moved
away. At the same moment Garnier approached her.

"Come away, man, and have our walk," said the Scotchman, seizing
Raymond's arm. "We'll not spoil that fellow's sport."

"No; but she will, I fear. Look, Mr. Buchanan, if she hasn't given him
her flowers to carry to the house while she waits here for the Captain!"

"Come away, scoffer!" said Buchanan, good-humoredly, locking his arm in
the young man's and dragging him from the veranda towards the avenue,
"and keep your observations for breakfast."

CHAPTER II

In the mean time, the young officer, who had disappeared in the
shrubbery, whether he had or had not been a spectator of the scene,
exhibited some signs of agitation. He walked rapidly on, occasionally
switching the air with a wand of willow, from which he had impatiently
plucked the leaves, through an alley of ceanothus, until he reached a
little thicket of evergreens, which seemed to oppose his further
progress. Turning to one side, however, he quickly found an entrance
to a labyrinthine walk, which led him at last to an open space and a
rustic summer-house that stood beneath a gnarled and venerable
pear-tree. The summerhouse was a quaint stockade of dark madrono
boughs thatched with red-wood bark, strongly suggestive of deeper
woodland shadow. But in strange contrast, the floor, table, and
benches were thickly strewn with faded rose-leaves, scattered as if in
some riotous play of children. Captain Carroll brushed them aside
hurriedly with his impatient foot, glanced around hastily, then threw
himself on the rustic bench at full length and twisted his mustache
between his nervous fingers. Then he rose as suddenly, with a few
white petals impaled on his gilded spurs and stepped quickly into the
open sunlight.

He must have been mistaken! Everything was quiet around him, the
far-off sound of wheels in the avenue came faintly, but nothing more.

His eye fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was
struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all
proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron
bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to
inter