the perfect English compromise. In summer, with the windows and doors
wide open, with the heavy radiant creepers, with the lawns lying about
the house, with the warm air flowing over the smooth, polished floors
and lifting the thin mats, with the endless whistle of bird song--then
the place seems like a summer-house. And in winter, with the heavy
carpets down, and the thick curtains, the very polished floors, so cool
in summer, seem expressly designed to glimmer warmly with candle and
fire-light; and the books seem to lean forward protectively and reassert
themselves, and the low beamed ceilings to shelter and safeguard the
interior comfort. The center of gravity is changed almost imperceptibly.
In summer the place is a garden with a house in the middle; in winter a
house surrounded by shrubberies.

The study in one way and the morning-room in another are the respective
pivots of the house. The study is a little paneled room on the
ground-floor, looking out upon the last of the line of old yews and the
beginning of the lawn; the morning-room (once known as the school-room)
is the only other paneled room in the house, on the first floor, looking
out upon the front. And round these two rooms the two sections of the
house-life tranquilly revolve. Here in one the Rector controls the
affairs of the parish, writes his sermons, receives his men friends (not
very many), and reads his books. There in the other Jenny orders the
domestic life of the house, interviews the cook, and occupies herself
with her own affairs. They are two rival, but perfectly friendly, camps.

* * * * *

Lately (I am speaking now of the beginning of November) there had not
been quite so much communication between the two camps as usual, not so
many informal negotiations. Jenny did not look in quite so often upon
her father--for ten minutes after breakfast, for instance, or before
lunch--and when he looked in on her he seemed to find her generally with
rather a preoccupied air, often sitting before the wide-arched
fireplace, with her hands behind her head, looking at the red logs.

He was an easy man, as has been seen, and did not greatly trouble his
head about it: he knew enough of the world to recognize that an
extremely beautiful girl like Jenny, living on the terms she did with
the great house--and a house with men coming and going continually, to
say nothing of lawn-tennis parties and balls elsewhere--cannot
altoget