n: don't you feel it so?"

"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir."

"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes," he answered; "and you
see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is
slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate,
and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now _here_" (he
pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) "all is real, sweet, and
pure."

He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and
cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of
old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies,
mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs. They
were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a
lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the
dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees
and shone down the quiet walks under them.

"Jane, will you have a flower?"

He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to
me.

"Thank you, sir."

"Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds
which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm--this placid and balmly
atmosphere?"

"I do, very much."

"You have passed a strange night, Jane."

"Yes, sir."

"And it has made you look pale--were you afraid when I left you alone
with Mason?"

"I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room."

"But I had fastened the door--I had the key in my pocket: I should have
been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb--my pet lamb--so near a
wolf's den, unguarded: you were safe."

"Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?"

"Oh yes! don't trouble your head about her--put the thing out of your
thoughts."

"Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays."

"Never fear--I will take care of myself."

"Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?"

"I cannot vouch for that till Mason is out of England: nor even then. To
live, for me, Jane, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and
spue fire any day."

"But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led. Your influence, sir, is evidently
potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure
you."

"Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me--but,
unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me,