parks, hedges, glimpses of lawns surfaced like a billiard-table,
flashes of white facades maculated with cool blue shadows.

Then, without warning if without a jar, the car slowed down to a safe
and sane pace and swung off between two cobblestone pillars into a
well-kept wilderness of trees that stood as a wall of privacy between
the highroad and an exquisitely parked estate bordering the cliffs.

Debouching into the open, the drive swept a gracious curve round a
wonderful wide lawn of living velvet and through the pillared
porte-cochere of a long, white-walled building with many gaily
awninged windows in its two wide-spread wings.

Sentinelled by sombre cypresses, relieved against a sapphire sky
bending to a sea of scarcely deeper shade, basking in soft, clear
sunlight, the house seemed to hug the earth very intimately, to belong
most indispensably, with an effect of permanence, of orderliness and
dignity that brought to mind instinctively the term estate, and caused
Sally to recall (with misspent charity) the fulsome frenzy of a
sycophantic scribbler ranting of feudal aristocracies, representative
houses, and encroaching tenantry.

The solitary symptom of a tenantry in evidence here was a perfectly
good American citizen in shirt-sleeves and overalls, pipe in
mouth, toleration in his mien, calmly steering a wheelbarrow down the
drive. Sally caught the glint of his cool eyes and experienced a flash
of intuition into a soul steeped in contemplative indulgence of the
city crowd and its silly antics. And forthwith, for some reason she
found no time to analyse, she felt more at home, less apprehensive.

As the car pulled up beneath the porte-cochere a mild-eyed footman ran
out to help the valet with the luggage; Savage skipped blithely down
and gave a hand to his sister, offering like assistance to Sally in
turn; and on the topmost of three broad, white, stone steps the
chatelaine of Gosnold House appeared to welcome her guests--a vastly
different personality, of course, from any in Sally's somewhat
incoherent anticipations.

Going upon the rather sketchy suggestions of Mrs. Standish, the girl
had prefigured Aunt Abby as a skittish female of three-score years and
odd; a gabbling creature with a wealth of empty gesticulation and a
parrot's vacant eye; semi-irresponsible, prone to bright colours and
an overyouthful style of dress.

She found, to the contrary, a lady of quiet reserve, composed of
manner, authoritative