t of grief had subsided she dried her eyes
resolutely, rose to her feet, arranged her hair in front of the mirror,
and feeling that her eyes were hot and her head heavy, she turned to the
tall French window, opened it and stepped out into the garden.

It had suffered from years of neglect, the shrubs grew rank and stalky,
the paths were covered with weeds, but there was a slight feeling of
spring in the air, the bare branches of the trees seemed swollen with
the rising sap, and upon the edge of the terrace balustrade a
red-breasted robin cocked its mischievous little eye upon her.

At the bottom of the garden there was a fine row of ilex, with here and
there a stone seat, and in the centre an old stone fountain moss-covered
and overshadowed by the hanging boughs of the huge, melancholy trees.
Crystal was very fond of this avenue; she liked to sit and watch the
play of sunshine upon the stone of the fountain: the melancholy quietude
of the place suited her present mood. It was so strange to look on these
big evergreen trees and on the havoc caused by weeds and weather on the
fine carving of the fountain, and to think of their going on here year
after year for the past twenty years, while that hideous revolution had
devastated the whole country, while men had murdered each other,
slaughtered women and children and committed every crime and every
infamy which lust of hate and revenge can engender in the hearts of men.
The old trees and the stone fountain had remained peaceful and still the
while, unscathed and undefiled, grand, dignified and majestic, while the
owner of the fine chateau of the gardens and the fountain and of half
the province around earned a precarious livelihood in a foreign land,
half-starved in wretchedness and exile.

She, Crystal, had never seen them until some ten months ago, when her
father came back into his own, and leading his daughter by the hand, had
taken her on a tour of inspection to show her the magnificence of her
ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old chateau with its
lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had
wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family
portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had
loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isere and
across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but
above all she had loved this sombre row of ilex trees, the bro