he old house half hidden by great maples and
beeches, their weighted branches sweeping the ground. The building was
of wood, painted white, and through an archway of verdure one saw the
generous doorway with its circular steps, with its fan-light above, and
its windows at the side. Other quaint windows, some of them of triple
width, suggested an interior of mystery and interest.

"My great-great-grandfather, Alexander Chiltern, built it," he said, "on
land granted to him before the Revolution. Of course the house has been
added to since then, but the simplicity of the original has always been
kept. My father put on the conservatory, for instance," and Chiltern
pointed to a portion at the end of one of the long low wings. "He
got the idea from the orangery of a Georgian house in England, and an
English architect designed it."

Honora took up the other photographs. One of them, over which she
lingered, was of a charming, old-fashioned garden spattered with
sunlight, and shut out from the world by a high brick wall. Behind the
wall, again, were the dense masses of the trees, and at the end of a
path between nodding foxgloves and Canterbury bells, in a curved recess,
a stone seat.

She turned her face. His was at her shoulder.

"How could you ever have left it?" she asked reproachfully.

She voiced his own regrets, which the crowding memories had awakened.

"I don't know," he answered, not without emotion. "I have often asked
myself that question." He crossed over to the railing of the porch,
swung about, and looked at her. Her eyes were still on the picture. "I
can imagine you in that garden," he said.

Did the garden cast the spell by which she saw herself on the seat? or
was it Chiltern's voice? She would indeed love and cherish it. And was
it true that she belonged there, securely infolded within those peaceful
walls? How marvellously well was Thalia playing her comedy! Which was
the real, and which the false? What of true value, what of peace and
security was contained in her present existence? She had missed the
meaning of things, and suddenly it was held up before her, in a garden.

A later hour found them in Honora's runabout wandering northward along
quiet country roads on the eastern side of the island. Chiltern, who was
driving, seemed to take no thought of their direction, until at
last, with an exclamation, he stopped the horse; and Honora beheld an
abandoned mansion of a bygone age sheltered by ancient