that was a St. Bernard out there,' he said
pointing to the French window. 'What a fine fellow! And what a fine
garden!'

Bran was to be seen nosing low down at the window; and alternately
lifting two huge white paws in his futile anxiety to enter the room.

'Then I dare say John is in the garden,' Leonora exclaimed, with sudden
animation, glad to be able to dismiss the faint uneasy suspicion which
had begun to form in her mind that John meant after all to avoid Arthur
Twemlow. 'Would you like to look at the garden?' she demanded, half
rising, and lifting her brows to a pretty invitation.

'Very much indeed,' he replied, and he jumped up with the impulsiveness
of a boy.

'It's quite warm,' she said, and thanked Harry for opening the window
for them.

'A fine severe garden!' he remarked enthusiastically outside, after he
had descanted to Bran on Bran's amazing perfections, and the dog had
greeted his mistress. 'A fine severe garden!' he repeated.

'Yes,' she said, lifting her skirt to cross the lawn. 'I know what you
mean. I wouldn't have it altered for anything, but many people think
it's too formal. My husband does.'

'Why! It's just English. And that old wall! and the yew trees! I tell
you----'

She expanded once more to his appreciation, which she took to herself;
for none but she, and the gardener who was also the groom, and worked
under her, was responsible for the garden. But as she displayed the
African marigolds and the late roses and the hardy outdoor
chrysanthemums, and as she patted Bran, who dawdled under her hand, she
looked furtively about for John. She hoped he might be at the stables,
and when in their tour of the grounds they reached the stables and he
was not there, she hoped they would find him in the drawing-room on
their return. Her suspicion reasserted itself, and it was strengthened,
against her reason, by the fact that Arthur Twemlow made no comment on
John's invisibility. In the dusk of the spruce stable, where an
enamelled name-plate over the manger of a loose box announced that
'Prince' was its pampered tenant, she opened the cornbin, and, entering
the loose-box, offered the cob a handful of crushed oats. And when she
stood by the cob, Twemlow looking through the grill of the door at this
picture which suggested a beast-tamer in the cage, she was aware of her
beauty and the beauty of the animal as he curved his neck to her
jewelled hand, and of the ravishing effect of an elegant woma