But chief of all this morning I wanted to be down among the flowers.  I made haste to wash and dress, taking an occasional peep through the window as I did so, and trying to entice the birds from their hiding-places in the ivy.  Then I opened my bed-room door, and then, in view of the great landing outside, I paused.  Several doors, all except mine now closed, gave admittance from this landing to different rooms.  Both landing and stairs were made of oak, black and polished with age.  One broad flight of stairs, with heavy carved banisters, pointed the way below; a second and narrower flight led to the regions above.  As a matter of course I chose the former, but not till after a minute’s hesitation as to whether I should venture to leave my room at all before I should be called.  But my desire to see the baskets of flowers prevailed over everything else.  I closed my door gently and hurried down.

I found myself in the entrance-hall of Deepley Walls, into which I had been ushered on my arrival.  There were the two curtained doorways through which Lady Chillington had come and gone.  For the rest, it was a gloomy place enough, with its flagged floor, and its diamond-paned windows high up in the semicircular roof.  A few rusty full-lengths graced the walls; the stairs were guarded by two effigies in armour; a marble bust of one of the Caesars stood on a high pedestal in the middle of the floor; and that was all.

I was glad to get away from this dismal spot and to find myself in the passage which led to the housekeeper’s room.  I opened the door and looked in, but the room was vacant.  Farther along the same passage I found the kitchen and other domestic offices.  The kitchen clock was just on the point of six as I went in.  One servant alone had come down.  From her I inquired my way into the garden, and next minute I was on the lawn.  The close-cropped grass was wet with the heavy dew; but my boots were thick and I heeded it not, for the flowers were there within my very grasp.

Oh, those flowers! can I ever forget them?  I have seen none so beautiful since.  There can be none so beautiful out of Paradise.

One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck.  But the odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much mine for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to me.  Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a sort of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong.  But the house was still asleep—­closed shutters or down-drawn blind at every window.  I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion, with a high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it was mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty.  The sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings of white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and terminating in oval shields of the same