e
chaste refinement of its adornment had a deeper effect than a mere
appeal to the material side of his nature. Though he had lived for the
most part in the bush and on the prairie, he had somehow acquired an
artistic susceptibility.

The furniture was old, and perhaps a trifle shabby, but it was of
beautiful design. Curtains, carpets and tinted walls formed a harmony of
soft coloring, and there were scattered here and there dainty works of
art, little statuettes from Italy, and wonderful Indian ivory and silver
work. A row of low, stone-ribbed windows pierced the front of the room.
Looking out he saw the trim garden lying in the warm evening light.
Immediately beneath the windows ran a broad graveled terrace, which was
evidently raked smooth every day, and a row of urns in which hyacinths
bloomed stood upon its pillared wall. From the middle of the terrace a
wide stairway led down to the wonderful velvet lawn, which was dotted
with clumps of cupressus with golden gleams in it, and beyond the lawn
clipped yews rose smooth and solid as a rampart of stone.

It all impressed him curiously--the order and beauty of it, the signs of
loving care. It gave him a key, he fancied, to the lives of the cultured
English people, for there was no sign of strain and fret and stress and
hurry here. Everything, it seemed, went smoothly with rhythmic
regularity, and though it is possible that many Englishmen would have
regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate country house, and would
have seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more than a somewhat
prosy old soldier and a withered lady old-fashioned in her dress and
views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer vision. Wyllard
could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point
of honor, and it seemed to him that Mrs. Radcliffe, with all the graces
of an earlier age and the smell of the English lavender upon her
garments, might have stepped down from some old picture. Then he
remembered that, after all, Englishwomen lived somewhat coarsely in the
Georgian days, and that he had met in Western Canada hard-handed men
grimed with dust and sweat who also could stand fast by a point of
honor. Though the fact did not occur to him, he had, for that matter,
done it more than once himself.

He recalled his wandering thoughts as his hostess smiled at him.

"You are interested in all you see?" she asked frankly.

"Yes," said Wyllard. "In fact, I'd like to spe