There came a night when Mr. and Mrs. Hardy had to go to a stately dinner party which did not include young girls. A most lovely night it was, in perhaps the loveliest month of the year, when there was no need to put candles in the carriage lamps, and no need for a fire in the big green drawing-room, where between seven and eight o'clock Rachel was left to amuse herself, in apparent safety, until bed time. A young moon shone in at the open windows before the mellow daylight was gone, as Mrs. Hardy, in rustling silk and tinkling jewels, entered to say good-night. The evening wind went whispering round the house, ruffling a thousand tufts of bougainvillea that embossed the outer wall, and breathing into the dim room the sweetness of early roses and the fresh fragrance of the sea. To Rachel, ever afterwards, it was the most beautiful night that the world had known. "Now, my dear, John will light the gas for you--two burners will do to-night, John--and you can practise your music undisturbed. Don't leave the windows open any longer; it will be chilly by and bye. And don't sit up late. Good-night." "Good-night, auntie," responded Rachel. She proffered the regulation kiss in an absent manner, nodded with a smile to her uncle, who was waiting outside, and stood on the threshold of a French window to watch the carriage until it passed out of the gates and disappeared. Then instead of going to practise her music, she went out and sat down on the top of one of the square pedestals that flanked the steps of the terrace upon which the window opened, and clasped her hands about her knees. John left the window open for her, lit the gas and the piano candles, returned to find her still sitting in the same place, as if she had not stirred, and went away to make his own arrangements for a pleasant evening. Half an hour later she was wandering about the garden, heedless of the chill that was creeping on with nightfall, and looking before her with eyes so full of dreams that they did not see where she was going to--gliding up and down the level terraces like a ghost in the dusky twilight, with the silver of the moonshine on her golden hair. And then, by mere mechanical submission to the force of habit, she found herself presently at that back gate which overlooked "the house," leaning her arms upon the upper rail, and staring at the low ridges of gleaming wall a few dozen yards off, which were rising as it seemed to her, with the rapidity of magic from the foundations that had taken so long to do, the stony embodiment of a relentless fate. It was very quiet there to-night. No swarms of carpenters, and bricklayers, and stonemasons; no idle boys gaping at them over the fence; no people walking and driving about the road.