aid Mrs. Brantley to Mrs.
Lancaster. "It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle.
We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass
decanter."

"I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners," said Mrs.
Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more. She
felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and
prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its
owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly
in love with Eleanor Milbourne's statue-like face, so insanely intent
upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt.
The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the
quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had
been conducted. If he had only been reasonable, how different things
might be! She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its
formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of
cedar. "He will change his mind before the month is out," she thought.
"A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home
of his fathers without a struggle."

This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when,
a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking
earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and
were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge. Even at that distance
there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was
there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a
riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed. "If she is engaged to
Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation
as this," Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth. "If he were not blind
or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she
would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so."

An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that
it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster
had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and
had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have
received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism. They had
paused in a square near the heart of the garden--a green, shaded
spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed
fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken t