Encountering no further opposition than a sigh of admiration--three hundred yards was the limit of pleasure in a walk to her mother--Millie Bushell started on her way, dangling a neat ebony stick in her hand, and setting her feet down with a firm decisive tread. It did not take her long to cover the two miles between her and her destination. Leaving the road, she entered the grounds of the Court and, following a little path which ran steeply down hill, she found herself by the willows and reeds fringing the edge of the Pool. Opposite to her, on the higher bank, some seven or eight feet above the water, rose the temple, a small classical erection, used now, when at all, as a summer-house, but built to commemorate the sad fate of Agatha Merceron. The sun had just sunk, and the Pool looked chill and gloomy; the deep water under the temple was black and still. Millie's robust mind was not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that, with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour after sunset--every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world, and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there--such shame and such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of the Mercerons. "What nonsense it all is!" said Millie aloud. "But I'm afraid Charlie is silly enough to believe it." As she spoke her eye fell on a Canadian canoe, which lay at the foot of the steps. She recognized it as Charlie Merceron's, and, knowing that approach to the temple from the other side was to be gained only by a difficult path through a tangled wood, and that the canoe usually lay under a little shed a few yards from where she stood, she concluded that Charlie was in the temple. There was nothing surprising in that: it was a favorite haunt of his. She raised her voice; and called to him. At first no answer came, and she repeated: "Charlie! Charlie!" After a moment of waiting a head was thrust out of a window in the side of the temple--a head in a straw hat. "Hullo!" said Charlie; Merceron in tones of startled surprise. Then, seeing the visitor, he added: "Oh, it's you, Millie! How did you know I was here?" "By the canoe, of course." "Hang the canoe!" muttered Charlie, and his head disappeared. A second later he came out of the doorway and down the steps. Standing on the lowest, he shouted--the Pool was about sixty feet across--"What do you want?" "How rude you are!" shouted Miss Bushell in reply. Charlie got into the canoe and began to paddle across. He had just reached the other side, when Millie screamed: "Look, look, Charlie!" she cried. "The temple!" "What?" "I--I saw something white at the window."