my Garden of Eden," he said, smiling, as the magnificent
expanse of cliff and sea greeted them--"thrice welcome, since to two of
us this is in the nature of a reunion."

It was a revelation even in spite of their expectations. Involuntarily
the eye first took in the turquoise water and the crumbling, broken
shore-line undershot by the caves formed by the pounding of centuries of
waves against the layers of animal formation. Except for the great
dry-dock and the naval barracks across the entrance to Hamilton Harbor,
all seemed as Nature had intended it.

Then, as the vision narrowed to its immediate surroundings, the visitors
realized how much art had accomplished in making the garden into which
their host had shown them seem so completely in harmony with the
brilliant setting of its location. They had thought of Bermuda as the
home of the Easter lily, not realizing that this is but a seasonal
incident; they could not have believed it possible to make the luxuriant
bloom of the tropical trees, shrubs, and flowers so subservient to the
beauty of their foliage, yet so marvelous a finish to the brilliancy of
the whole. The great rubber-tree extended its awkward branches in
exactly the right directions to add quaint picturesqueness; the
_poincianas_, as graceful as the rubber-tree was _gauche_, lifted their
smooth, bare branches like elephant trunks, from which the great leaves
hung down in magnificent clusters; the calabash, with its own ungainly
beauty, proved its right by exactly fitting into the landscape at its
own particular corner and the row of giant cabbage-palms stood like
sentinels, adding a quiet dignity suggestive of the East. Between these
and other massive trunks the smaller trees and flowering shrubs were
interspersed in so original and bewildering a manner that each glance
forced a new exclamation of delight. The night-blooming cereus crawled
like an ugly reptile in and out among the branches of the giant cedars,
but the bursting buds gave evidence that at nightfall they would redeem
the hideous suggestiveness of the trailing vine. Cacti and sago-palms
formed brilliant backgrounds for the lilies of novel shapes and colors,
and for the other flowers which vied with one another for preference in
the eye of their beholder.

The conversation was commonplace in its nature, and in it Marian took
little part. The vivacity which usually made her conspicuous in any
group had entirely left her. Her interest in the