Paint had been
spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of
it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and
the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.

The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of
the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly
opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make
a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic "summer-house." It was
almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and
it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses
in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the
juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the "summer-house" was
pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little
girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and "housekeeping,"
or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm
afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.

Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship
with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the
window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He
looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end
to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic
seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an
entomologist intent upon classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared
to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again
and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete
disapproval.

"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.

And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly,
he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a
rustic aperture of the "summer-house" and staring full into his
window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of
a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own.
Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her
action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in
the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending,
and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any
other purpose