ching riot of flowers
beneath the trees, foxgloves and canterbury bells and campanulas and
delphiniums, all blues and purples and whites, with here and there the
pink of dog-roses and gorgeous yellow splashes of celandine. On
entering the stately coolness, Miss Winwood closed her sunshade and
looked at her watch, a solid timepiece harboured in her belt. A knitted
brow betrayed mathematical calculation. It would take her five minutes
to reach the lodge gate. The train bringing her venerable uncle,
Archdeacon Winwood, for a week's visit would not arrive at the station
for another three minutes, and the two fat horses would take ten
minutes to drag from the station the landau which she had sent to meet
him. She had, therefore, eight minutes to spare. A rustic bench invited
repose. Graciously she accepted the invitation.

Now, it must be observed that it was not Miss Winwood's habit to waste
time. Her appointments were kept to the minute, and her appointment
(self-made on this occasion) was the welcoming of her uncle, the
Archdeacon, on the threshold of Drane's Court. But Miss Winwood was
making holiday and allowed herself certain relaxations. Her brother's
health having broken down, he had paired for the rest of the session
and gone to Contrexeville for a cure. She had therefore shut up her
London house in Portland Place, Colonel Winwood's home while Parliament
sat, and had come to her brother's house, Drane's Court, her home when
her presence was not needed in London. She was tired; Drane's Court,
where she had been born and had lived all her girlhood's life, was
restful; and the seat in the shade of the great beech was cunningly
curved. The shiny, mahogany-coloured spaniel, prescient of siesta,
leaped to her side and lay down with his chin on her lap and blinked
his yellow eyes.

She lay back on the seat, her hand on the dog's head, looking
contentedly at the opposite wilderness of bloom and the glimpses,
through the screen of trees and shrubs, of the sunlit stretches of park
beyond. She loved Drane's Court. Save for the three years of her
brother's short married life, it had been part of herself. A Winwood, a
very younger son of the Family--the Family being that of which the Earl
of Harpenden is Head (these things can only be written of in capital
letters)--had acquired wealth in the dark political days of Queen Anne,
and had bought the land and built the house, and the property had never
passed into alien hands. As f