remember that it has ever happened before. This is the dining-room--yes,
I like to show it all to you--she planned it all herself, you know--is
it not a beautiful room? You see, though we are Les Solitudes, we can
seat a large dinner-party and Tante has sometimes many guests; not often
though; this is her place of peace and rest. She collected all this
Jacobean furniture; connoisseurs say that it is very beautiful. The
music-room, alas, is closed; but I will show you the garden--and Mrs.
Talcott in it. I am eager for you and Mrs. Talcott to meet."

He would rather have stayed and talked to her in the morning-room; but
she compelled him, rather as a sacristan compels the slightly bewildered
sight-seer, to pass on to the next point of interest. She led him out to
the upper terrace of the garden, which dropped, ledge by ledge, with low
walls and winding hedges, down the cliff-side. She pointed out to him
the sea-front of the house, with its wide verandah and clustered trees
and the beautiful dip of the roof over the upper windows, far gazing
little dormer windows above these. Tante, she told him, had designed the
house. "That is her room, the corner one," she said. "She can see the
sunrise from her bed."

Gregory was interested neither in Madame von Marwitz's advantages nor in
her achievements. He asked Karen where her own room was. It was at the
back of the house, she said; a dear little room, far up. She, too, had a
glimpse of the Eastern headland and of the sunrise.

They were walking along the paths, their borders starred as yet frugally
with hints of later glories; but already the aubrietia and arabis made
bosses of white or purple on the walls, and in a little copse daffodils
grew thickly.

"There is Mrs. Talcott," said Karen, quickening her pace. Evidently she
considered Mrs. Talcott, in her relation to Tante, as an important
feature of Les Solitudes.

It was her relation to Karen that caused Gregory to look with interest
at the stout old lady, dressed in black alpaca, who was stooping over a
flower-border at a little distance from them. He had often wondered what
this sole companion of Karen's cloistered life was like. Mrs. Talcott's
skirts were short; her shoes thick-soled and square-toed, fastening with
a strap and button over white stockings at the ankle. She wore a round
straw hat, like a child's, and had a basket of gardening implements
beside her.

"Mrs. Talcott, here is Mr. Jardine," Karen announced,