d and battered, however,
by age, and it stood at the corner of two streets, both dingily quiet,
and destined, no doubt, to be rebuilt before long in the general
rejuvenation of Mayfair.

As the Duchess had said, it occupied the site of what had once--about
1740--been the westerly end of a mews belonging to houses in Cureton
Street, long since pulled down. The space filled by these houses was now
occupied by one great mansion and its gardens. The rest of the mews had
been converted into three-story houses of a fair size, looking south,
with a back road between them and the gardens of Cureton House. But at
the southwesterly corner of what was now Heribert Street, fronting west
and quite out of line and keeping with the rest, was this curious little
place, built probably at a different date and for some special family
reason. The big planes in the Cureton House gardens came close to it and
overshadowed it; one side wall of the house, in fact, formed part of the
wall of the garden.

The Duchess, full of nervousness, ran up the steps, put in the key
herself, and threw open the door. An elderly Scotchwoman, the caretaker,
appeared from the back and stood waiting to show them over.

"Oh, Julie, perhaps it's _too_ queer and musty!" cried the Duchess,
looking round her in some dismay. "I thought, you know, it would be a
little out-of-the-way and quaint--unlike other people--just what you
ought to have. But--"

"I think it's delightful," said Julie, standing absently before a case
of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good deal of
space in the little hall. "I love stuffed birds."

The Duchess glanced at her uneasily. "What is she thinking about?" she
wondered. But Julie roused herself.

"Why, it looks as though everything here had gone to sleep for a hundred
years," she said, gazing in astonishment at the little hall, with its
old clock, its two or three stiff hunting-pictures, its drab-painted
walls, its poker-work chest.

And the drawing-room! The caretaker had opened the windows. It was a
mild March day, and there were misty sun-gleams stealing along the lawns
of Cureton House. None entered the room itself, for its two
semi-circular windows looked north over the gardens. Yet it was not
uncheerful. Its faded curtains of blue rep, its buff walls, on which the
pictures and miniatures in their tarnished gilt frames were arranged at
intervals in stiff patterns and groups; the Italian glass, painted with
di