gravel-walk winding on the right, by a row of tall pines, alongside the
pool--on the left branching out among swelling grassy mounds, surmounted
by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch fir glows in the
descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and acacias; the
great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg tucked
under a wing, and where the open water-lilies lie calmly accepting the
kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth
emerald greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the
park, from which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds
away from the pool, and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant
pleasure-ground; and on this lawn our two ladies, whose part in the
landscape the painter, standing at a favourable point of view in the
park, would represent with a few little dabs of red and white and blue.

Seen from the great Gothic windows of the dining-room, they had much more
definiteness of outline, and were distinctly visible to the three
gentlemen sipping their claret there, as two fair women in whom all three
had a personal interest. These gentlemen were a group worth considering
attentively; but any one entering that dining-room for the first time,
would perhaps have had his attention even more strongly arrested by the
room itself, which was so bare of furniture that it impressed one with
its architectural beauty like a cathedral. A piece of matting stretched
from door to door, a bit of worn carpet under the dining-table, and a
sideboard in a deep recess, did not detain the eye for a moment from the
lofty groined ceiling, with its richly-carved pendants, all of creamy
white, relieved here and there by touches of gold. On one side, this
lofty ceiling was supported by pillars and arches, beyond which a lower
ceiling, a miniature copy of the higher one, covered the square
projection which, with its three large pointed windows, formed the
central feature of the building. The room looked less like a place to
dine in than a piece of space enclosed simply for the sake of beautiful
outline; and the small dining-table, with the party round it, seemed an
odd and insignificant accident, rather than anything connected with the
original purpose of the apartment.

But, examined closely, that group was far from insignificant; for the
eldest, who was reading in the newspaper the last portentous proceedings
of the French pa