if not critical. No
beauty could have received with more modesty the triumph which had
greeted her at Mrs. Grenfell's tableaux, in April, when she had appeared
as Circe, in an architectural frame especially designed by Mr. Farwell
himself. There had been a moment of hushed astonishment, followed by an
acclaim that sent the curtain up twice again.

We must try to imagine, too, the logical continuation of that triumph in
the Baiae of our modern republic and empire, Newport. Open, Sesame!
seems, as ever, to be the countersign of her life. Even the palace gates
swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she had
already passed through other gates--Mrs. Grainger's, for instance. Baiae,
apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights upside down,
it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down, is to alight in
a palace. The Graingers did not live in one, but in a garden that existed
before the palaces were, and one that the palace owners could not copy: a
garden that three generations of Graingers, somewhat assisted by a
remarkable climate, had made with loving care. The box was priceless, the
spreading trees in the miniature park no less so, and time, the
unbribeable, alone could now have produced the wide, carefully cherished
Victorian mansion. Likewise not purchasable by California gold was a
grandfather whose name had been written large in the pages of American
history. His library was now lined with English sporting prints; but
these, too, were old and mellow and rare.

To reach Honora's cottage, you turned away from the pomp and glitter and
noise of Bellevue Avenue into the inviting tunnel of a leafy lane that
presently stopped of itself. As though to provide against the contingency
of a stray excursionist, a purple-plumed guard of old lilac trees massed
themselves before the house, and seemed to look down with contempt on the
new brick wall across the lane. 'Odi profanum vulgus'. It was on account
of the new brick wall, in fact, that Honora, through the intervention of
Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter, had been able to obtain this most
desirable of retreats, which belonged to a great-aunt of Miss Godfrey,
Mrs. Forsythe.

Mr. Chamberlin, none other than he of whom we caught a glimpse some years
ago in a castle near Silverdale, owned the wall and the grounds and the
palace it enclosed. This gentleman was of those who arrive in Newport
upside down; and was even now, with the somewh