trees and a clipped yew-hedge, and a
sun-dial, on which a stately race of peacocks loved to plume
themselves.

Beyond, divided by the yew-hedge, was the herb-garden, where in the
olden time many a notable house-mother, with her chintz skirts hustled
through her pocket-holes, gathered simples for her medicines, and
sweet-smelling lavender and rosemary for her presses of home-spun
linen.

These gardens were walled and entered by a curiously wrought iron
door, said to be Flemish work; and below the terrace lay a smooth,
gently sloping lawn, that stretched to the edge of a large sheet of
water, called by courtesy the lake--the whole shut in by the
background of the Redmond wood.

Here through the sunny afternoon slept purple shadows, falling aslant
the yellow water-lilies, and here underneath the willows and silvery
birches, in what was called "The Lover's Walk," had Hugh dreamed many
a day-dream, whose beginning and whose end was Margaret.

Poor Hugh! he little thought as he paced that walk that the day should
come when his wife should walk there beside him, and look at him with
eyes that were not Margaret's.

When Fay, escorted by Mrs. Heron and followed by Janet, had ascended
the broad oaken staircase, and passed through the long gallery, the
housekeeper paused in a recess with four red-baized doors.

"Sir Hugh's dressing-room, my lady," she explained, blandly, "and the
next door belongs to Sir Hugh's bathroom, and this," pointing solemnly
to the central door, "is the oriel room."

"What," faltered Lady Redmond, rather fearing from Mrs. Heron's manner
that this room might be the subject of some ghost story.

"The oriel room," repeated the housekeeper still more impressively,
"where the Redmond ladies have always slept. In this room both Sir
Wilfred and Sir Hugh were born, and Sir Marmaduke and his sons Percy
and Herewald were laid in state after the battle."

It was well that Fay did not understand the latter end of the
housekeeper's speech, but she shuddered notwithstanding with vague
discomfort when the door was opened, and all the glories of the oriel
room were displayed before her. It was so large and grand that a queen
might have slept in it and have been content, but to Fay's eyes it was
only a great gloomy room, so full of hidden corners and recesses, that
the blazing fire-light and the wax-candles only seemed to give a faint
circle of light, beyond which lurked weird shadows, hiding in the deep
embras