of flowers. From here
numerous paths paved with white stone went wandering under snowball
trees and wild apple, losing themselves in shrubbery. But one made a
clear turn across the lawn for the rose-garden, where in the midst a
round pool of water lay like a flaming bit of the sunset sky. Among the
bushes red and rose and white, the elder woman in her black, the younger
in her gown more glowing, with a veil over her hair, walked, and,
loitering, looked down into the water, seeing their faces reflected,
and, behind, the tangled brambles and the crimson sky. They did not
speak, but at last their companionship was peaceful, was perfect. The
only sounds were the sleepy notes of birds and that faint, high whisper
of the tree tops on an evening that is not still.

Loud and shrill and shriller and more piercing, from the west wing of
the house, overhanging the garden, the sound reached them--an alarum
that set Flora's heart to leaping. Startled apart, they listened.

"Would that be--is that for you?"

"I think it's for me."

The words came from them simultaneously, and almost at the same instant
Flora had started across the lawn. The sight of an aproned maid coming
out on the veranda and peering down the garden set her running fleetly.

"It's a telephone for Miss Gilsey," the girl said.

"Oh, thank you," Flora panted.

She knew so well the voice she had expected at the other end of the wire
that the husky, boyish note which reached her, attenuated by distance,
struck her with dismay and disappointment.

"Ella, oh, yes; yes; Ella." What was she saying? Ella was using the
telephone as if it were a cabinet for secrets.

"Clara told me you were down there," she was explaining. "I saw her this
morning, yes. Well,"--and she could hear Ella draw in her breath--"I'm
so relieved! I thought you'd be, too, to know. I _was_ perfectly right.
She was after him."

Flora faltered, "After whom?" There flashed through her mind more than
one person that, by this time, Clara might possibly be after.

"Why, after papa, of course!" Ella's injured surprise brought her back
to the romance of Judge Buller. Her voice rose in sheer bewilderment.
"Well?"

Ella's voice rose triumphantly. "I got it out of her myself. I just came
right out to her at last. She seemed awfully surprised that I knew; but
she owned up to it, and what do you think? I bought her off!"

"Bought her off?" Flora cried. Each fact that Ella brought forth seemed
to her m