"Yes," he said, "I am higher here. I shall get a better view." And he began to build his house in fancy--to see it towering over all his neighbours', with great white walls and colonnades, and myriad windows full of lights, and lovely gardens full of flowers and fountains. "I must begin at once," he said. "I must see the contractors to-morrow. I must not put it off any longer, or I shall be an old man before I can begin to enjoy it." And after long musing over the details of his project, he stumbled back, through saplings, and tussocks, and broken bottles, to the fence; tore his dress-coat on a nail getting over it; and subsiding into his cab, lit a cheroot, and stared intently into vacancy all the way to his club. When he reached this bachelor's home he did not know what to do with himself. He thought he would write to a celebrated firm of contractors to make an appointment for the morning; but it was past twelve o'clock, and the letters had been collected. Some men called him to come and play loo, but he was not in the mood for cards. He tried billiards, and found his hand unsteady; he went into the smoking-room, but it was hot and noisy. He had always liked his club, and maintained against all comers that it was a glorious institution; but now he began to see that after all a middle-aged gentleman of ample fortune might find himself pleasanter lodgings. He went out of doors, where the air was so sweet and cool, rustling up and down an ivied wall, and over a strip of lawn that lay deep in shadow below it; and looking at the clear dark sky and the clear pale stars, he put to himself a momentous question, for which he had a half-shaped answer ready: "Who shall I ask to be the mistress of my house?" CHAPTER IV. THE ANSWER. A girl of eighteen is popularly supposed to be grown up--to have all wisdom and knowledge necessary for her guidance and protection through the supreme difficulties of a woman's lot. When one gets ten years older, one is apt to think that this is a mistake. Life is not so easy to learn. The treasures of love, like visions of the Holy Grail, are not revealed to those who have known none of the waiting, and yearning, and suffering, and sacrifice that teach their divine nature and their immeasurable worth. And to all the vast meanings and solemn mysteries that surround the great question of right and wrong--the great question of human life--the spiritual eyesight is blind, or worse than blind, until the experience of years of mistakes and disillusions brings, little by little, dim apprehensions of light and truth. Rachel Fetherstonhaugh, with the snare of her beauty and her sensuous love of luxurious surroundings newly laid about her feet, entered upon her kingdom more than ordinarily unprepared.