ives . . . Echo
Lodge, she calls it, I think. I've often heard of it but I've never seen
it before. Isn't it a romantic spot?"

"It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined," said Anne
delightedly. "It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream."

The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of red
Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two
dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great
chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy,
finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts
to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.

Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate where
the girls were standing opened. The house bounded it on one side; on
the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke, so overgrown with
moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high, green bank. On the
right and left the tall, dark spruces spread their palm-like branches
over it; but below it was a little meadow, green with clover aftermath,
sloping down to the blue loop of the Grafton River. No other house or
clearing was in sight . . . nothing but hills and valleys covered with
feathery young firs.

"I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is," speculated Diana as they
opened the gate into the garden. "They say she is very peculiar."

"She'll be interesting then," said Anne decidedly. "Peculiar people are
always that at least, whatever else they are or are not. Didn't I tell
you we would come to an enchanted palace? I knew the elves hadn't woven
magic over that lane for nothing."

"But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess," laughed
Diana. "She's an old maid . . . she's forty-five and quite gray, I've
heard."

"Oh, that's only part of the spell," asserted Anne confidently. "At
heart she's young and beautiful still . . . and if we only knew how to
unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again. But we
don't know how . . . it's always and only the prince who knows that
. . . and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet. Perhaps some fatal
mischance has befallen him . . . though THAT'S against the law of all
fairy tales."

"I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again," said Diana. "They say
she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving . . . Paul's father . . . when
they were young. But they quarreled and parted."

"Hush," warned Anne. "The door is open."