ere was an ancient bridge across the moat which divided the Court from
the highway. The water lay still and shining under the broad lily
leaves, and the grey walls of the old house stood bathed in the
enchanted light. It was an evening that made you think of legend and
song, of knights riding home across the bridge when the fight was over,
of ladies watching from those windows high for the first glimpse of
streaming pennon and waving plume.

The old house stood fair and stately in the sunset, with all its oriel
windows and pointed gables and gilded vanes. As Elsie went up the grey
stone steps of the terrace she had that curious feeling which Rossetti
has called "sudden light"--

"I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell."

Nothing seemed unfamiliar; the dense walls of box and yew showing dark
against a saffron sky, the half-defaced knightly figure above the great
portico, the tiled floor of the hall, where a few white rose-petals were
scattered.

A little later, when she sat down with the other guests to dine in a
long room, dark with much black carved oak, she still had the dreamy
sensation of returning to a life forgotten. The guests, however, were
strangers. Mrs. Verdon, in a white silk gown embroidered with bunches of
poppies, had never seemed less known. The grey-headed man with the rosy
face was Mr. Danforth, and the two auburn-haired young ladies were his
daughters, Mary and Lily.

Before that evening was over it occurred to Elsie that one or two
persons were made slightly uncomfortable by her presence at the Court;
and one of them, Lily Danforth, showed her uneasiness rather plainly.

She was a pretty girl, who owed her prettiness chiefly to her bright
colouring and the freshness of youth. Her white dress, relieved only by
touches of the palest green, became her very well. But she was restless,
and Elsie saw that her eyes often glanced quickly and furtively in the
direction of Francis Ryan.

All the Danforths treated Elsie rather distantly, but they were devoted
to Mrs. Verdon. As there was no mistress of Wayne's Court, it fell to
Mary's part to play hostess, and when she gave the signal to rise from
the table Elsie felt that she was going into a chilly atmosphere.

In a hundred little ways did Miss Danforth contrive to slight Miss
Kilner. Mary had never been as pretty as Lily, and was ten or twelve
years older. It was not unknown to family friends that, after hoping
vainly to win