ies in armour; a
marble bust of one of the Caesars stood on a high pedestal in the middle
of the floor; and that was all.

I was glad to get away from this dismal spot and to find myself in the
passage which led to the housekeeper's room. I opened the door and
looked in, but the room was vacant. Farther along the same passage I
found the kitchen and other domestic offices. The kitchen clock was just
on the point of six as I went in. One servant alone had come down. From
her I inquired my way into the garden, and next minute I was on the
lawn. The close-cropped grass was wet with the heavy dew; but my boots
were thick and I heeded it not, for the flowers were there within my
very grasp.

Oh, those flowers! can I ever forget them? I have seen none so beautiful
since. There can be none so beautiful out of Paradise.

One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck. But the
odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much mine
for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to me.
Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a sort
of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong. But the
house was still asleep--closed shutters or down-drawn blind at every
window. I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion, with a
high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it was
mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty. The
sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings of
white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and
terminating in oval shields of the same material, on which had
originally been carved the initials of the builder and the date of
erection; but the summer's sun and the winter's rain of many a long year
had rubbed both letters and figures carefully out. Long afterwards I
knew that Deepley Walls had been built in the reign of the Third William
by a certain Squire Chillington of that date, "out of my own head," as
he himself put it in a quaint document still preserved among the family
archives; and rather a muddled head it must have been in matters
architectural.

After this, I ventured round by the main entrance, with its gravelled
carriage sweep, to the other side of the house, where I found a long
flagged terrace bordered with large evergreens in tubs placed at
frequent intervals. On to this terrace several French windows
opened--the windows, as I found lat