inds me," Priscilla exclaimed, shutting the
book with a clap and uttering her big profound laugh--"that reminds me
of the things that have been going on in our bathing-pool since you were
here last. We gave the village people leave to come and bathe here in
the evenings. You've no idea of the things that happened."

She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now and
then she uttered a deep gurgle of laughter. "...mixed bathing...saw them
out of my window...sent for a pair of field-glasses to make sure...no
doubt of it..." The laughter broke out again. Denis laughed too.
Barbecue-Smith was tossed on the floor.

"It's time we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She hoisted
herself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, striding
beneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her, faintly humming to
himself:

"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra,
Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-popera."

And then the little twiddly bit of accompaniment at the end: "ra-ra."

CHAPTER III.

The terrace in front of the house was a long narrow strip of turf,
bounded along its outer edge by a graceful stone balustrade. Two little
summer-houses of brick stood at either end. Below the house the ground
sloped very steeply away, and the terrace was a remarkably high one;
from the balusters to the sloping lawn beneath was a drop of thirty
feet. Seen from below, the high unbroken terrace wall, built like
the house itself of brick, had the almost menacing aspect of a
fortification--a castle bastion, from whose parapet one looked out
across airy depths to distances level with the eye. Below, in the
foreground, hedged in by solid masses of sculptured yew trees, lay the
stone-brimmed swimming-pool. Beyond it stretched the park, with its
massive elms, its green expanses of grass, and, at the bottom of the
valley, the gleam of the narrow river. On the farther side of the stream
the land rose again in a long slope, chequered with cultivation. Looking
up the valley, to the right, one saw a line of blue, far-off hills.

The tea-table had been planted in the shade of one of the little
summer-houses, and the rest of the party was already assembled about it
when Denis and Priscilla made their appearance. Henry Wimbush had begun
to pour out the tea. He was one of those ageless, unchanging men on the
farther side of fifty, who might be thirty, who might be anything. Denis
had known him almost as l