The onward rush of our story between its canon walls compels us reluctantly to skip the narrative of the winter conquests of the lady who is our heroine.  Popularity had not spoiled her, and the best proof of this lay in the comments of a world that is nothing if not critical.  No beauty could have received with more modesty the triumph which had greeted her at Mrs. Grenfell’s tableaux, in April, when she had appeared as Circe, in an architectural frame especially designed by Mr. Farwell himself.  There had been a moment of hushed astonishment, followed by an acclaim that sent the curtain up twice again.

We must try to imagine, too, the logical continuation of that triumph in the Baiae of our modern republic and empire, Newport.  Open, Sesame! seems, as ever, to be the countersign of her life.  Even the palace gates swung wide to her:  most of them with the more readiness because she had already passed through other gates—­Mrs. Grainger’s, for instance.  Baiae, apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights upside down, it is difficult to become righted.  To alight upside down, is to alight in a palace.  The Graingers did not live in one, but in a garden that existed before the palaces were, and one that the palace owners could not copy:  a garden that three generations of Graingers, somewhat assisted by a remarkable climate, had made with loving care.  The box was priceless, the spreading trees in the miniature park no less so, and time, the unbribeable, alone could now have produced the wide, carefully cherished Victorian mansion.  Likewise not purchasable by California gold was a grandfather whose name had been written large in the pages of American history.  His library was now lined with English sporting prints; but these, too, were old and mellow and rare.

To reach Honora’s cottage, you turned away from the pomp and glitter and noise of Bellevue Avenue into the inviting tunnel of a leafy lane that presently stopped of itself.  As though to provide against the contingency of a stray excursionist, a purple-plumed guard of old lilac trees massed themselves before the house, and seemed to look down with contempt on the new brick wall across the lane.  ‘Odi profanum vulgus’.  It was on account of the new brick wall, in fact, that Honora, through the intervention of Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter, had been able to obtain this most desirable of retreats, which belonged to a great-aunt of Miss Godfrey, Mrs. Forsythe.

Mr. Chamberlin, none other than he of whom we caught a glimpse some years ago in a castle near Silverdale, owned the wall and the grounds and the palace it enclosed.  This gentleman was of those who arrive in Newport upside down; and was even now, with the somewhat doubtful assistance of his wife, making lavish and pathetic attempts to right himself.  Newport had never forgiven him for the razing of a mansion and the felling of trees which had been landmarks, and for the driving out of Mrs. Forsythe.  The mere sight of the modern wall had been too much for this lady—­the lilacs and the leaves in the lane mercifully hid the palace—­and after five and thirty peaceful summers she had moved out, and let the cottage.  It was furnished with delightful old-fashioned things that seemed to express, at every turn, the aristocratic and uncompromising personality of the owner who had lived so long in their midst.