th Miss Hugonin,
at the precise moment she inquired of him whether it were not the
strangest thing in the world--referring thereby to the sudden manner
in which she had been disinherited.

The poet laughed and assented. Afterward, turning north from the front
court, they descended past the shield-bearing griffins--and you may
depend upon it that each shield is adorned with a bas-relief of the
Eagle--that guard the broad stairway leading to the formal gardens
of Selwoode. The gardens stretch northward to the confines of Peter
Blagden's estate of Gridlington; and for my part--unless it were that
primitive garden that Adam lost--I can imagine no goodlier place.

On this particular forenoon, however, neither Miss Hugonin nor Felix
Kennaston had eyes for its comeliness; silently they braved the
griffins, and in silence they skirted the fish-pond--silver-crinkling
in the May morning--and passed through cloistral ilex-shadowed walks,
and amphitheatres of green velvet, and terraces ample and mellow
in the sunlight, silently. The trees pelted them with blossoms;
pedestaled in leafy recesses, Satyrs grinned at them apishly, and the
arrows of divers pot-bellied Cupids threatened them, and Fauns piped
for them ditties of no tone; the birds were about shrill avocations
overhead, and everywhere the heatless, odourful air was a caress; but
for all this, Miss Hugonin and Mr. Kennaston were silent and very
fidgetty.

Margaret was hatless--and the glory of the eminently sensible spring
sun appeared to centre in her hair--and violet-clad; and the gown,
like most of her gowns, was all tiny tucks and frills and flounces,
diapered with semi-transparencies--unsubstantial, foam-like, mere
violet froth. As she came starry-eyed through the gardens, the
impudent wind trifling with her hair, I protest she might have been
some lady of Oberon's court stolen out of Elfland to bedevil us poor
mortals, with only a moonbeam for the changeable heart of her, and
for raiment a violet shadow spirited from the under side of some big,
fleecy cloud.

They came presently through a trim, yew-hedged walkway to a
summer-house covered with vines, into which Margaret peeped and
declined to enter, on the ground that it was entirely too chilly
and gloomy and _exactly_ like a mausoleum; but nearby they found a
semi-circular marble bench about which a group of elm-trees made a
pleasant shadow splashed at just the proper intervals with sunlight.

On this Margaret