d in--one of those large white
square dwelling's, devoid of ornament, yet possessing every substantial
merit, and attaining, by virtue of their dimensions and simplicity, an
effect of handsomeness denied to many more tricked-out building's. The
house satisfied; so did Millie, unless the judge were very critical.

"I shall just walk round by the Pool and back," she added as she opened
the door.

"My dear, it's four miles!"

"Well, it's only a little after six, and we don't dine till eight."

Encountering no further opposition than a sigh of admiration--three
hundred yards was the limit of pleasure in a walk to her mother--Millie
Bushell started on her way, dangling a neat ebony stick in her hand,
and setting her feet down with a firm decisive tread. It did not take
her long to cover the two miles between her and her destination.
Leaving the road, she entered the grounds of the Court and, following a
little path which ran steeply down hill, she found herself by the
willows and reeds fringing the edge of the Pool. Opposite to her, on
the higher bank, some seven or eight feet above the water, rose the
temple, a small classical erection, used now, when at all, as a
summer-house, but built to commemorate the sad fate of Agatha Merceron.
The sun had just sunk, and the Pool looked chill and gloomy; the deep
water under the temple was black and still. Millie's robust mind was
not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that,
with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha
Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the
shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to
die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour
after sunset--every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor
Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world,
and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there--such shame and
such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of
the Mercerons.

"What nonsense it all is!" said Millie aloud. "But I'm afraid Charlie
is silly enough to believe it."

As she spoke her eye fell on a Canadian canoe, which lay at the foot of
the steps. She recognized it as Charlie Merceron's, and, knowing that
approach to the temple from the other side was to be gained only by a
difficult path through a tangled wood, and that the canoe usually lay
under a little shed a few yards fro