ver to see the angular fact of English landlordism muffle itself
in so many concessions. The weather had just become perfect; it was one
of the dozen exquisite days of the English year--days stamped with a
purity unknown in climates where fine weather is cheap. It was as if the
mellow brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which starred the
dark waysides like petals wind-scattered over beds of moss, had been
meted out to us by the cubic foot--distilled from an alchemist's
crucible. From this pastoral abundance we moved upon the more composed
scene, the park proper--passed through a second lodge-gate, with
weather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where the
great trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed along the bed of
a woodland stream. Here before us rose the gabled grey front of the
Tudor-time, developed and terraced and gardened to some later loss, as
we were afterwards to know, of type.

"Here you can wander all day," I said to Searle, "like an exiled
prince who has come back on tiptoe and hovers about the dominion of the
usurper."

"To think of 'others' having hugged this all these years!" he answered.
"I know what I am, but what might I have been? What do such places make
of a man?"

"I dare say he gets stupidly used to them," I said. "But I dare say too,
even then, that when you scratch the mere owner you find the perfect
lover."

"What a perfect scene and background it forms!" my friend, however,
had meanwhile gone on. "What legends, what histories it knows! My heart
really breaks with all I seem to guess. There's Tennyson's Talking Oak!
What summer days one could spend here! How I could lounge the rest of my
life away on this turf of the middle ages! Haven't I some maiden-cousin
in that old hall, or grange, or court--what in the name of enchantment
do you call the thing?--who would give me kind leave?" And then he
turned almost fiercely upon me. "Why did you bring me here? Why did you
drag me into this distraction of vain regrets?"

At this moment there passed within call a decent lad who had emerged
from the gardens and who might have been an underling in the stables. I
hailed him and put the question of our possible admittance to the house.
He answered that the master was away from home, but that he thought it
probable the housekeeper would consent to do the honours. I passed my
arm into Searle's. "Come," I said; "drain the cup, bitter-sweet though
it be. We must go in.