ry, billiard-room, and
smoking-room. These all communicated with each other as well as with the
conservatory, and it was as easy as it was delightful to exchange the
neighborhood of books or pipes or billiard-balls for that of Mrs. Vane's
orchids and stephanotis-blossoms. Poor Mrs. Vane used to grumble over
the conservatory. It was on the wrong side of the house--the gentlemen's
side, she called it--and did not run parallel with the drawing-room; but
the very oddness of the arrangement seemed to please her guests.

Hubert had always liked to smoke his morning cigar amongst the flowers,
and, as he paced slowly up and down the tesselated floor, and inhaled
the heavy perfume of the myrtles and the heliotrope, his features
relaxed a little, his eyes grew less gloomy and his brow more tranquil.
He glanced round him with an air almost of content, and drew a deep
breath.

"If one could live amongst flowers all one's life, away from the crimes
and follies of the rest of the world, how happy one might be!" he said
to himself half cynically, half sadly, as he stooped to puff away the
green-fly from a delicate plant with the smoke of his cigar. "That's
impossible, however. There's no chance of a monastery in these modern
days! What wouldn't I give just now to be out of all this--this
misery--this deviltry?" He put a strong and bitter accent on the last
word. "But I see no way out of it--none!"

"There is no way out of it--for you," a voice near him said.

Without knowing it, he had spoken aloud. This answer to his reverie
startled him exceedingly. He wheeled round to discover whence it came,
and, to his surprise, found himself close to the open library window,
where, just inside the room, a girl was sitting in a low cushioned
chair.

He took the cigar from his mouth and held it between his fingers as he
looked at her, his brow contracting with anger rather than with
surprise. He stood thus two or three minutes, as if expecting her to
speak, but she did not even raise her eyes. She was a tall, fair girl
with hair of the palest flaxen, artistically fluffed out and curled upon
her forehead, and woven into a magnificent coronet upon her graceful
head; her downcast eyelids were peculiarly large and white, and, when
raised, revealed the greatest beauty and the greatest surprise of her
face--a pair of velvety dark-brown eyes, which had the curious power of
assuming a reddish tint when she was angry or disturbed. Her skin was of
the