oves and murders and mysteries by the roomful. I shall be ashamed
of you if you haven't."

"Oh Mr. Searle! We've always been a very well-behaved family," she quite
seriously pleaded. "Nothing out of the way has ever happened, I think."

"Nothing out of the way? Oh that won't do! We've managed better than
that in America. Why I myself!"--and he looked at her ruefully enough,
but enjoying too his idea that he might embody the social scandal or
point to the darkest drama of the Searles. "Suppose I should turn out
a better Searle than you--better than you nursed here in romance and
extravagance? Come, don't disappoint me. You've some history among you
all, you've some poetry, you've some accumulation of legend. I've been
famished all my days for these things. Don't you understand? Ah you
can't understand! Tell me," he rambled on, "something tremendous. When
I think of what must have happened here; of the lovers who must have
strolled on this terrace and wandered under the beeches, of all the
figures and passions and purposes that must have haunted these walls!
When I think of the births and deaths, the joys and sufferings, the
young hopes and the old regrets, the rich experience of life--!" He
faltered a moment with the increase of his agitation. His humour of
dismay at a threat of the commonplace in the history he felt about him
had turned to a deeper reaction. I began to fear however that he was
really losing his head. He went on with a wilder play. "To see it all
called up there before me, if the Devil alone could do it I'd make a
bargain with the Devil! Ah Miss Searle," he cried, "I'm a most unhappy
man!"

"Oh dear, oh dear!" she almost wailed while I turned half away.

"Look at that window, that dear little window!" I turned back to see him
point to a small protruding oriel, above us, relieved against the purple
brickwork, framed in chiselled stone and curtained with ivy.

"It's my little room," she said.

"Of course it's a woman's room. Think of all the dear faces--all of them
so mild and yet so proud--that have looked out of that lattice, and of
all the old-time women's lives whose principal view of the world has
been this quiet park! Every one of them was a cousin of mine. And you,
dear lady, you're one of them yet." With which he marched toward her and
took her large white hand. She surrendered it, blushing to her eyes
and pressing her other hand to her breast. "You're a woman of the past.
You're nobly simple