ANNE PAGE BY NETTA SYRETT AUTHOR OF “THE CHILD OF PROMISE,” ETC. NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BECCLES _All rights reserved_ ANNE PAGE I At the hour between sunset and twilight Miss Page was generally to be found in her garden. The long irregular front of Fairholme Court faced the west, and before it, through the interminable evenings of summer, was spread the pageant of the sunset, the quiet glory of the after-glow, and finally the transition, mysterious, indefinably subtle, from the light of day, to the vaporous purple of night. It was at this quiet end of evening that the garden, always beautiful, took on an added grace, the dream-like delicate charm which belongs to the enchanted places of the earth--places such as Corot knew, and with a magic equal to their own, has transferred upon canvasses which hold for ever the glamour of the dawn or the mystic spell of twilight. The house, built originally in the last years of Elizabeth, and enlarged in succeeding reigns, was a medley of incongruous architecture, resulting in a style delightful and fantastic enough for a dwelling in a fairy tale. The latest wing, added in Georgian days, its red brick toned now to a restful mellow colour, imparted an air of formal stateliness to the irregular but charming structure. Roses wreathed the latticed window-panes of the older part of the house; clematis rioted over part of the roof and climbed the chimney-stacks. On the sunny walls of the later wing a vine had been trained. The door of the panelled hall in the middle of the house opened upon a square of flagstones, and level with these, a lawn, its smoothness unspoilt by flower-beds, stretched to a sunk fence from which meadowland, whose broad expanse was broken here and there by groups of elms, extended far as the eye could see till its verge touched the sunset sky. On the lawn to the right of the house, one magnificent beech tree swept the ground with its lower branches, and then soared majestically towards the sky. On the left there was a group of chestnuts. But, except for a small white fountain opposite the hall porch, the lawn in its velvet softness was left unadorned. The fountain Miss Page had brought back after one of her periodical journeys to Italy. It was a slight, graceful thing, of delicate workmanship, its thread of water falling from a fluted shell into a square marble basin. It was a fountain beloved by the fan-tailed pigeons, who from their dovecote behind the kitchen garden came to it often to drink. When they perched on the edge of the shell, or walked near it on the grass, their snowy tails outspread, a hint of Italian courtyards, a sort of fragrance of Italy, was wafted into the English garden. All the flowers grew in secluded sheltered spots, protected by high walls or hedges of yew.