house to the rose-garden at its foot, and held them so that Claudia
could pass under.

"They ought to be cut." She stopped and unfastened a long tendril of
intertwined honeysuckle and bridal-wreath which had caught her hair.
"Everything ought to be cut and fixed, only--"

"It would be beyond pardon. If any one should attempt to change this
garden, death should be the penalty. One rarely sees such
old-fashioned flowers as are here, never in modern places."

"No one knows when many of them were planted, and nothing hurts
them." Stooping, Claudia picked from the ground a few violets and
lilies-of-the-valley growing around the trunk of an immense elm-tree
at the end of the path, then looked up.

"Don't let's go to the roses yet. I want to see what the sun-dial
says. This is the way my great-grandmother used to come to meet my
great-grandfather when she was a girl. Her parents wanted her to
marry some one else. She would slip out of the house and down this
path to that big magnolia-tree, from where she could see and not be
seen, and it was there they made their plans to run away."

"We will go there. It looks like a very nice place at which to make
plans."

Into Claudia's face color sprang quickly, and for a moment she drew
back. "Oh no! It is too beautiful to-day to make plans of any kind.
It is enough to just--live. You haven't seen half of Elmwood yet,
and you want to talk of--other things."

"I certainly do." Laine stepped back that Claudia might lead the way
down the path, box-bordered so high that those within could not be
seen outside, and smiled in the protesting face. A few moments more
and they had come out to the front lawn on the left of the house and
some distance below the terrace on which it overlooked the river, and
as they reached a group of spreading magnolias he drew in his breath.

"I do not wonder that you love it. And I am asking you to leave it!"

She looked up. "Come, I want to show you some of the old things, the
dear things, and then--"

"We will come back, and you will tell me what I must know, Claudia?"

She nodded and pulled the bells from the lily-of-the-valley she held
in her hands. "We will come back and--I will tell you."

For an hour, in the soft glow of the sun now, sinking in the heavens,
they wandered through the grounds and separate gardens of the old
estate, now walking the length of the long avenue, shaded by great
elms of more than century age, now aroun