ul anachronism, shocking to architects, for it had
been tacked on to the house in the eighteenth century by some member of
the family who had made the "grand tour" and fallen in love with Italy.
Seeing no reason why a classic addition with a high-pillared loggia
should be unsuitable to a house in England built in Elizabethan and
Jacobean days, he had made it.

Fortunately it was so situated as not to be seen from the front of the
building, or anywhere else except from the one side which it deformed;
and there a more artistic grandson had hidden the abortion as much as
possible by planting a grove of beautiful stone-pines.

As for the wing itself, the interior was the most "liveable" part of the
house, and with the modern improvements put in to please the American
bride before her fortune vanished, it had become charming within.
Annesley's bedroom and her husband's adjoining had long windows opening
out on the loggia and looking between tall, straight trunks of umbrella
pines toward the distant sea.

It was late before she could slip away to her own quarters, for she had
been wanted for bridge, an amusement which she secretly thought the last
refuge for the mentally destitute. She had told her maid not to sit up;
and she was thankful to close the door of the small corridor or vestibule
which led into the suite, knowing that until Knight came she would be
alone.

She wanted him to come, and meant to wait (it did not matter how long)
until they could have that talk she wished for yet dreaded intensely.
Meanwhile, however, it was good to have a few minutes in which to compose
her mind, to decide whether she should begin, or expect Knight to do so;
and how she could frankly let him see her state of mind without seeming
too harsh, too relentless, to the man who had given her happiness with
both hands--the only real happiness she had ever known.

She sat for a while in the boudoir, thinking that Knight might come soon,
before she began to undress. There was a dying glow of coal and logs in
the fireplace, but staring into the rosy mass brought no inspiration. She
could not concentrate her thoughts on the scene which must presently be
enacted; they would go straggling wearily to other scenes already acted,
even as far back as that hour at the Savoy when a young man who looked to
her like the hero of a novel begged to sit at her table.

He still seemed as much as ever like the hero of a novel in which he had
splendidly made