ith this in my brain, as I watched the
shadow pass over the girl's face as she thought of her ten lost years,
was, that had we had these sensations at fifteen and twenty they would
certainly not have out-lasted us till now! But this also I would not
say. The passing of our passions, however we may recognise it as
philosophers, is not pleasant to us as lovers.

"Oh! there is our house, I believe!" said Lucia, suddenly, as we neared
the station.

"Yes; you can just see it from the line, I know," I answered, looking
through the window. "What a glorious evening!"

All before our eyes lay in the still, liquid golden light, and through
the burnished haze that seemed to slope obliquely between us and it we
saw the square white house, lying a little blow the level of the line,
and all but hidden behind a delicate, intricate profusion of light
green foliage. Behind it rose a rolling slope, clothed half-way up with
a copse of young larch trees, whose slender stems sent long shadows
down the whole length of its side, falling across the sun-baked,
waving, brown-and-yellow grasses, and the red cows, lying lower down
the slope, drowsy, as all else seemed in the mellow sunlight.

At the side of the house stretched a lawn, shaded-in from the carriage
drive by a fringe of larch and spruce, and on this lawn, innocent of
tennis-courts and similar abominations, were planted here and there
single trees. It had been the fancy of the owner that not one of these
on the lawn should be indigenous, and almost every country out of
Europe was represented by one lovely forest denizen.

The crytomera, the cedar of Japan, raised its delicate rosy crest here
under the blue of an English sky; a young Turkish cypress shot like a
dart from the ground and threw its narrow shadow straight as a spear
across the emerald turf; and farther on a small squat tree, from China,
unfurled smooth, glossy, polished leaves of lightest green, and
thick-lipped succulent scarlet flowers, indolently to the kiss of the
British sun. We caught a passing glimpse of it, and Lucia drew in her
breath softly, with pleasure.

"How lovely! What a pretty house, Victor!" she said.

"Yes; I know it is supposed to be a very charming place."

"And don't you think so, too?" she asked, turning to me, and the side
light from the window caught the curly hair under the velvet hat brim
and turned it into gold.

"I haven't got a very keen artistic eye, Lucia, I think. Certainly not
fo