would not
ride homeward and shut himself within four walls just yet; but yield
himself to the wooing of these fair sylvan divinities; to that of the
spirit of the evening wind, of the softly shrouding haze, and of the
broadening sunlight, a little longer.

A turf-ride branches away to the left, leading along a narrow
outstanding spur of table-land to a summer-house, the prospect from
which is among the noted beauties of Brockhurst. This summer-house or
Temple, as it has come to be called, is an octagonal structure.
Round-shafted pillars rise at each projecting angle. In the recesses
between them are low stone benches, save in front where an open
colonnade gives upon the view. The roof is leaded, and surmounted by a
wooden ball and tall, three-sided spike. These last, as well as the
plastered, windowless walls are painted white. Within, the hollow of
the dome is decorated in fresco, with groups of gaily clad ladies and
their attendant cavaliers, with errant cupids, garlands of flowers,
trophies of rather impossible musical instruments, and cages full of
imprisoned, and therefore doubtless very naughty, loves. The colours
have grown faint by action of insweeping wind and weather; but this
lends a pathos to the light-hearted, highly-artificial art, emphasising
the contrast between it and its immediate surroundings.

For the Temple stands on a platform of turf at the extreme point of the
spur of table-land. The hillside, clothed with heather and bracken,
fringed lower down with a coppice of delicate birches, falls steeply
away in front and on either hand. Outstretched below, besides the
panorama of the great woods, lies all the country about Farley, on to
Westchurch, and beyond again--pasture and cornlands, scattered hamlets
and red-roofed farms half-hidden among trees, the glint of streams set
in the vivid green of water-meadows, and soft blue range behind range
of distance to that pale uprising of chalk down in the far south. Upon
the right, some quarter of a mile away, blocking the end of an avenue
of ancient Scotch firs, the eastern facade of Brockhurst House shows
planted proudly upon the long gray and red lines of the terrace.

Richard checked his horse, pausing to look for a moment at that
well-beloved home. Then musing, he let his horse go forward along the
level turf-ride. The glistering, gray dome and white columns of the
Temple standing out against the spacious prospect--the growing
brightness of this last, s