ountersign of her life. Even the palace gates
swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she
had already passed through other gates--Mrs. Grainger's, for instance.
Baiae, apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights
upside down, it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down,
is to alight in a palace. The Graingers did not live in one, but in a
garden that existed before the palaces were, and one that the palace
owners could not copy: a garden that three generations of Graingers,
somewhat assisted by a remarkable climate, had made with loving care.
The box was priceless, the spreading trees in the miniature park no less
so, and time, the unbribeable, alone could now have produced the wide,
carefully cherished Victorian mansion. Likewise not purchasable by
California gold was a grandfather whose name had been written large in
the pages of American history. His library was now lined with English
sporting prints; but these, too, were old and mellow and rare.

To reach Honora's cottage, you turned away from the pomp and glitter and
noise of Bellevue Avenue into the inviting tunnel of a leafy lane
that presently stopped of itself. As though to provide against the
contingency of a stray excursionist, a purple-plumed guard of old lilac
trees massed themselves before the house, and seemed to look down with
contempt on the new brick wall across the lane. 'Odi profanum vulgus'.
It was on account of the new brick wall, in fact, that Honora, through
the intervention of Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter, had been able to
obtain this most desirable of retreats, which belonged to a great-aunt
of Miss Godfrey, Mrs. Forsythe.

Mr. Chamberlin, none other than he of whom we caught a glimpse some
years ago in a castle near Silverdale, owned the wall and the grounds
and the palace it enclosed. This gentleman was of those who arrive
in Newport upside down; and was even now, with the somewhat doubtful
assistance of his wife, making lavish and pathetic attempts to right
himself. Newport had never forgiven him for the razing of a mansion and
the felling of trees which had been landmarks, and for the driving out
of Mrs. Forsythe. The mere sight of the modern wall had been too much
for this lady--the lilacs and the leaves in the lane mercifully hid the
palace--and after five and thirty peaceful summers she had moved out,
and let the cottage. It was furnished with delightful old-fashioned
things that see