for the trellises of
climbing roses that covered two sides and overflowed here and there on
long arbors, flecking the dull brown stone with a glorious crimson,
like a warrior's blood. On the sunny steps a lop-eared hound puppy
was playing with a mottled cat.

The front door was open, showing a hall where stood a grandfather's
clock and a spindle-legged table holding a bowl of potpourri. The
timepiece had landed from a sailing vessel at Jamestown wharf with the
household goods of that English Garland who had adopted the old Middle
Plantation when Dunmore was royal governor under George III. Framed
portraits and engravings lent tints of tarnished silver, old-rose and
sunset-golds--colors time-toned and reminiscent, carrying a charming
sense of peaceful content, of gentleness and long tradition. The dark
polished stairway had at its turn a square dormer-window which looked
out upon one of the rose-arbors.

Down this stair, somewhat later that afternoon, came Shirley Dandridge,
booted and spurred, the rebellious whorls of her russet hair now as
closely filleted as a Greek boy's, in a short divided skirt of yew-green
and a cool white blouse and swinging by its ribbon a green hat whose
rolling brim was caught up at one side by a crisp blue-black hawk's
feather. She stopped to peer out of the dormer-window to where, under
the latticed weave of bloom, beside a round iron table holding a hoop
of embroidery and a book or two, a lady sat reading.

The lady's hair was silver, but not with age. It had been so for many
years, refuted by the transparent skin and a color as soft as the cheek
of an apricot. It was solely in her dark eyes, deep and strangely
luminous, that one might see lurking the somber spirit of passion and of
pain. But they were eager and brilliant withal, giving the lie to the
cane whose crook one pale delicate hand held with a clasp that somehow
conveyed a sense of exasperate if semi-humorous rebellion. She wore
nun's gray; soft old lace was at her wrists and throat, and she was
knitting a scarlet silk stocking.

She looked up at Shirley's voice, and smiled brightly. "Off for your
ride, dear?"

"Yes. I'm going with the Chalmers."

"Oh, of course. Betty Page is visiting them, isn't she?"

Shirley nodded. "She came yesterday. I'll have to hurry, for I saw them
from my window turning into the Red Road." She waved her hand and ran
lightly down the stair and across the lawn to the orchard.

She pulled a green