ghs of a
venerable rookery. And in this other picture--the walled garden at
Guise--that was his uncle, Lord Askern, a hale gouty-looking figure,
planted robustly on the terrace, a gun on his shoulder and a couple of
setters at his feet. And here was the river below the park, with Guy
"punting" a girl in a flapping hat--how Margaret hated the flap that
hid the girl's face! And here was the tennis-court, with Guy among a
jolly cross-legged group of youths in flannels, and pretty girls about
the tea-table under the big lime: in the centre the curate handing
bread and butter, and in the middle distance a footman approaching with
more cups.

Margaret raised this picture closer to her eyes, puzzling, in the
diminished light, over the face of the girl nearest to Guy
Dawnish--bent above him in profile, while he laughingly lifted his
head. No hat hid this profile, which stood out clearly against the
foliage behind it.

"And who is that handsome girl?" Margaret had said, detaining the
photograph as he pushed it aside, and struck by the fact that, of the
whole group, he had left only this member unnamed.

"Oh, only Gwendolen Matcher--I've always known her--. Look at this: the
almshouses at Guise. Aren't they jolly?"

And then--without her having had the courage to ask if the girl in the
punt were also Gwendolen Matcher--they passed on to photographs of his
rooms at Oxford, of a cousin's studio in London--one of Lord Askern's
grandsons was "artistic"--of the rose-hung cottage in Wales to which,
on the old Earl's death, his daughter-in-law, Guy's mother, had retired.

Every one of the photographs opened a window on the life Margaret had
been trying to picture since she had known him--a life so rich, so
romantic, so packed--in the mere casual vocabulary of daily life--with
historic reference and poetic allusion, that she felt almost oppressed
by this distant whiff of its air. The very words he used fascinated and
bewildered her. He seemed to have been born into all sorts of
connections, political, historical, official, that made the Ransom
situation at Wentworth as featureless as the top shelf of a dark
closet. Some one in the family had "asked for the Chiltern
Hundreds"--one uncle was an Elder Brother of the Trinity House--some
one else was the Master of a College--some one was in command at
Devonport--the Army, the Navy, the House of Commons, the House of
Lords, the most venerable seats of learning, were all woven into the
d