sunshine which lay upon
the earth, despite the singing of the birds in the early morning, and at
evening, despite the flowers which displayed their colours and lavished
their scents around him as he worked, the world might have been bathed in
fog for all he saw of its brightness. Hope had taken unto herself wings
and fled from him, and with her joy had departed.

He felt a queer bitterness towards his work, a bitterness towards the
garden and the big grey house, and most particularly towards the man who
had lived in it, and who was responsible for his present unhappiness. He
had none towards the Duchessa. But then, after all, he appeared in her
eyes as a fraud, the thing of all others he himself most detested. He
could not possibly blame her for her attitude in the matter. Yet all the
time, he had a queer feeling of something like remorse for his present
bitterness; it was almost as if the garden and the very flowers
themselves were reproaching him for it, reminding him that they were not
to blame. And then a little incident suddenly served to dispel his gloom,
at all events in a great measure.

It was a slight incident, a trivial incident, merely an odd dream.
Nevertheless, having in view its oddness, and--unlike most dreams--its
curious connectedness, also its effect on Antony's spirit, it may be well
to record it.

He dreamt he was walking in a garden. He knew it was the garden of
Chorley Old Hall, though there was something curiously unlike about it,
as there often is in dreams. The garden was full of flowers, and he could
smell their strong, sweet scent. At one side of the garden--and this, in
spite of that curious unlikeness, was the only distinctly unlike thing
about it--was a gate of twisted iron. He was standing a long way from the
gate, and he was conscious of two distinct moods within himself,--an
impulse which urged him towards the gate, and something which held him
back from approaching it.

Suddenly, from another direction, he saw a woman coming towards him.
Recognition and amazement fell upon him. She was the same small girl he
had played with in his boyhood, and whose name he could not remember, but
grown to womanhood. She came towards him, her fair hair uncovered, and
shining in the sunshine.

As she reached him she stood still.

"Antony," she cried in her old imperious way, "why don't you go to the
gate at once? She is waiting to be let in."

"Who is waiting?" he demanded.

"Go and see," she