. Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with
the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly
interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house
struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees
over a circle of stone. The house broke on him in the shape of an
Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in
places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had
soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out
again. Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains. The
house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied. He
stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little
balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an
intruder. But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead
her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who
gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a
garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with
the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest
walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode.

The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him
at once, and he for a second did not recognize her. Her extreme
English air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed,
so decidedly altered, bewildered him. His first greeting, mentally,
before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine. "Why, her beauty! What
in heaven's name had she done with it?"

"_What_ are you doing here?"

They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an
insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as
well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor. She froze the poor
gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence
of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly.

"Won't you, since you _are_ here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup
of tea?"

She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being
here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one
has a better right!"

"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit
us. You see we are two."

The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her
hand and she really smiled beautifully. Then she put her hand on the
nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familia