oan's laugh rang out. "Goodness knows, but I really had forgotten all
about it. And although I've only been in it once I've known it by sight
all my life. Martin's father had it built, Papa George, and it's
awfully nice and sporting, with kennels, and tennis courts, and
everything."

"Yes, and beautifully furnished, I remember. I dined there several
times, years ago before Mr. Gray had--" Mrs. Harley drew up short.

Mrs. Ludlow finished the sentence. "A little quarrel with me," she
said. "I objected to his hounds scrambling over this property and wrote
pithily to that effect. We never spoke again. My dear, while we are all
together, why not personally conduct us over this country house of
yours and give us an unaccustomed thrill of excitement."

"Yes, do, darling," said Mrs. Harley. "George would love to see it."

"I will," said Joan. "I'd adore to. I don't know a bit what it's like,
except the hall and the library. It will come as a perfect surprise to
me."

"A very perfect surprise," said Mrs. Ludlow.

Joan sprang to her feet. "Let's go now. No time like the present."

"Well," said Mrs. Harley cautiously, though equally keen.

"No, no, not to-night. Bear with your aged grandparents. Besides, the
housekeeper and the other servants will probably be in bed. To-morrow
now, early--"

"All right," said Joan. "To-morrow then, directly after breakfast.
Fancy forgetting that one possessed a country house. It's almost
alarming." And she put her hands on her grandfather's shoulders, and
bent down and kissed him. She was excited and thrilled. It was her
house because it was Martin's, and soon she would be Martin's too. And
they would spend a real honeymoon in the place in which they had sat
together in the dark and laid their whispered plans for the great
adventure. How good that would be!

And when she went back to the piano and rattled off a fox trot,
Grandmother Ludlow got up and hobbled out of the room, on her tapping
stick, to hide her glee.

XIII

It was ten o'clock when Joan stood once more in the old, familiar
bedroom in which she had slept all through her childhood and
adolescence.

Nothing had been altered since the night from which she dated the
beginning of her life. Her books were in the same places. Letters from
her school friends were in the same neat pile on her desk. The things
that she had been obliged to leave on her dressing-table had not been
touched. A framed photograph of her mother