t. Beyond that it was pure
nature.

Castel Casteggio itself, a beautiful house of white brick with sweeping
piazzas and glittering conservatories, standing among great trees with
rolling lawns broken with flower-beds as the ground sloped to the lake,
was perhaps the most beautiful house of all; at any rate, it was an
ideal spot to wear old clothes in, to dine early (at 7.30) and, except
for tennis parties, motor-boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live
absolutely to oneself.

It should be explained that the house was not called Castel Casteggio
because the Newberrys were Italian: they were not; nor because they
owned estates in Italy: they didn't nor had travelled there: they
hadn't. Indeed, for a time they had thought of giving it a Welsh name,
or a Scotch. But the beautiful country residence of the
Asterisk-Thomsons had stood close by in the same primeval country was
already called Penny-gw-rydd, and the woodland retreat of the
Hyphen-Joneses just across the little lake was called
Strathythan-na-Clee, and the charming chalet of the Wilson-Smiths was
called Yodel-Dudel; so it seemed fairer to select an Italian name.

* * * * *

"By Jove! Miss Furlong, how awfully good of you to come down!"

The little suburban train--two cars only, both first class, for the
train went nowhere except out into the primeval wilderness--had drawn
up at the diminutive roadside station. Mr. Spillikins had alighted, and
there was Miss Philippa Furlong sitting behind the chauffeur in the
Newberrys' motor. She was looking as beautiful as only the younger
sister of a High Church episcopalian rector can look, dressed in white,
the colour of saintliness, on a beautiful morning in July.

There was no doubt about Philippa Furlong. Her beauty was of that
peculiar and almost sacred kind found only in the immediate
neighbourhood of the High Church clergy. It was admitted by all who
envied or admired her that she could enter a church more gracefully,
move more swimmingly up the aisle, and pray better than any girl on
Plutoria Avenue.

Mr. Spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white summer dress and wide
picture hat, with her parasol nodding above her head, realized that
after all, religion, as embodied in the younger sisters of the High
Church clergy, fills a great place in the world.

"By Jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good of you!"

"Not a bit," said Philippa. "Hop in. Dulphemia was coming, but she
couldn't. Is that