d have been any such. Nor could there
be a clear rippling stream with steep green banks, and broken rocks
lying about its bed. Such beauties are beauties of landscape, and do
not of their nature belong to a garden. But the shrubs of Nethercoats
were of the rarest kind, and had been long enough in their present
places to have reached the period of their beauty. Nothing had been
spared that a garden could want. The fruit-trees were perfect in
their kind, and the glass-houses were so good and so extensive that
John Grey in his prudence was some times tempted to think that he had
too much of them.

It must be understood that there were no grounds, according to
the meaning usually given to that word, belonging to the house at
Nethercoats. Between the garden and the public road there was a
paddock belonging to the house, along the side of which, but divided
from it by a hedge and shrubbery, ran the private carriageway up to
the house. This swept through the small front flower-garden, dividing
it equally; but the lawns and indeed the whole of that which made
the beauty of the place lay on the back of the house, on which side
opened the windows from the three sitting-rooms. Down on the public
road there stood a lodge at which lived one of the gardeners. There
was another field of some six or seven acres, to which there was
a gate from the corner of the front paddock, and which went round
two sides of the garden. This was Nethercoats, and the whole estate
covered about twelve acres.

It was not a place for much bachelor enjoyment of that sort generally
popular with bachelors; nevertheless Mr Grey had been constant in his
residence there for the seven years which had now elapsed since he
had left his college. His easy access to Cambridge had probably done
much to mitigate what might otherwise have been the too great tedium
of his life; and he had, prompted thereto by early associations,
found most of his society in the Close of Ely Cathedral. But, with
all the delight he could derive from these two sources, there had
still been many solitary hours in his life, and he had gradually
learned to feel that he of all men wanted a companion in his home.

His visits to London had generally been short and far between,
occasioned probably by some need in the library, or by the necessity
of some slight literary transaction with the editor or publisher of a
periodical. In one of these visits he had met Alice Vavasor, and had
remained in