s of the house, its ruddy walls and ranges of
mullioned windows, its pierced, stone parapet and stacks of slender,
twisted chimneys, to be seen with a low-toned distinctness of form and
colour infinitely charming. Soft and rich as velvet, it rose, with a
certain noble serenity, above its terraces and fragrant, red-walled
gardens, under the enormous dome of the tranquil, far-off, evening sky.

Every aspect of this place, in rain and shine, summer and winter, from
dawn to dark and round to dawn again, was familiar to Katherine
Calmady. Coming here first, as a bride, the homely splendour of the
house, and the gladness of its situation crowning the ridge of hill,
appealed strongly to her imagination. Later it sheltered her long
sorrow, following so hard on the heels of her brief joy. But in both
alike, during all the vicissitudes of her thought and of her career,
the face of Brockhurst remained as that of a friend, kindly,
beneficent, increasingly trusted and beloved. And so she had come to
know every stick and stone of it, from spacious, vaulted cellar to
equally spacious, low-roofed, sun-dried attic--the outlook from each
window, the character of each room, the turn of each stairway, the
ample proportions of each lobby and stairhead, all the pleasant scents,
and sounds, and colours, that haunted it both within and without. It
might have been supposed that after so many years of affectionate
observation and commerce, Brockhurst could have no new word in its
tongue, could hold no further self-revelation, for Lady Calmady. Yet,
as she passed now from the arcaded garden-hall, supporting the eastern
bay of the Long Gallery, on to the level, green square of the
troco-ground, and stood gazing out over the downward sloping park--the
rough, short turf of it dotted with ancient thorn trees and broken by
beds of bracken and dog-roses--to the Long Water, glistening like some
giant mirror some quarter-mile distant in the valley, she became
sensible of a novel element in her present relation to this place.

For the first time, in all her long experience, she was at Brockhurst
quite alone. The house was vacant even of a friend. For Julius March
had, rather to Katherine's surprise, selected just this moment for the
paying of his yearly visit to a certain college friend, a scholarly and
godly person, now rector of a sleepy, country parish away in the heart
of the great, Midlandshire grasslands. Katherine experienced a
momentary sense of