ere was no immediate suitor on the horizon, what
more was there to be said of the daughter of the house?

Next morning Lady Durwent was still amiable, but rather dull. The
following day she was frankly bored. On Sunday, during the sermon, she
planned a house-party; and so, in due course, invitations were issued,
and accepted or regretfully declined. She possessed sufficient sense
of the fitness of things to refrain from transplanting any of her
_unusual_ varieties from their native soil, but asked only those
persons whose family connections ensured a proper tone to the affair.

Perhaps it was just a kindly thought on her part to ask Austin Selwyn.
It may have been the desire of having an author to lend an exotic touch
to the gathering. Or, being a woman, she may have wanted an American
to see her at the head of the table in two widely different settings.

Perhaps it was all three motives.

II.

In preparation for the arrival of guests, 'a certain liveliness'
pervaded the tranquil atmosphere of Roselawn. The tennis-court was
rolled and marked; fishing-tackle was inspected and repaired; in view
of the possibility of dancing, the piano was tuned; bridge deficiencies
were made good at the local stationer's; and gardeners and gamekeepers
hurried about their tasks, while flapping game-birds signalled to
trembling trout that the enemy was mobilising for the yearly campaign.

Roselawn differed little from the hundreds of English country-houses,
the seclusion and invulnerability of which have played so great a part
in forming the English character. A lodge at the entrance to the
estate supplied a medieval sense of challenge to the outside world, and
the beautifully kept hedges at the side of the mile-long carriage-drive
gave that feeling of retirement and emancipation from the world so much
desired by tranquil minds.

It was the setting to produce a poet, or a race of Tories. Once within
the embracing solitude of Roselawn, the discordant jangling of common
people worrying about their long hours of work or the right to give
their offspring a decent chance in the world became a distant murmur,
no more unpleasant or menacing than the whang of a wasp outside the
window.

Not that the inhabitants of Roselawn were any more callous or selfish
than others of their class, for the record of the Durwent family was by
no means devoid of kindly and knightly deeds. Tenantry lying ill were
always the recipients of studied th