building when it's finished--the life built
by a lonely man. I like the look of our palace better, Wilhelmina."

"I should like to know where my part comes in?" she asked.

"Every room," he answered, "will need adorning, and the lamps--one
person alone can never keep them alight, and we don't want them to go
out, Wilhelmina. Do you remember the old German, who said that beautiful
thoughts were the finest pictures to hang upon your walls? Think of next
spring, when we shall hear the children from that miserable town running
about in the woods, picking primroses--do you see how yellow they are
against the green moss?"

Wilhelmina rose.

"I must really go and pick some," she said. "What about your pheasants,
Victor?"

He laughed.

"I'll find plenty of sport, never fear," he answered, "without keeping
the kiddies shut out. Why, the country belongs to them! It's their
birthright, not ours."

They walked through the plantation side by side. The ground was still
soft with the winter's rains, but everywhere the sunlight came sweeping
in, up the glade and across the many stretching arms of tender
blossoming green. The ground was starred with primroses, and in every
sheltered nook were violets. A soft west wind blew in their faces as
they emerged into the country lane. Below them was the valley, hung with
a faint blue mist; all around them the song of birds, the growing sounds
of the stirring season. Stephen Hurd came cantering by, and stopped for
a moment to speak about some matter connected with the estates.

"My love to Letty," Wilhelmina said graciously, as he rode off. Then she
turned to Macheson.

"Stephen Hurd is a little corner in your house," she remarked.

"In our house," he protested. "I should never have considered him if he
had not worked out his own salvation. If he had reached me ten minutes
later----"

She gripped his arm.

"Don't," she begged.

He laughed.

"Don't ever brood over grisly impossibilities," he said. "The man never
breathed who could have kept you from me. Across the hills home, or are
your shoes too thin?"

He swung open the gate, and they passed through, only to descend the
other side, along the broad green walk strewn with grey rocks and
bordered with gorse bushes, aglow with yellow blossom. They skirted the
fir plantation, received the respectful greetings of Mrs. Green at the
gamekeeper's cottage, and, crossing the lower range of hills, approached
the house by the back aven