I looked at her with amazement. She was dressed in a tight-fitting body, with a long skirt, which she held up in one hand, whilst she grasped a small revolver in the other. On her head was a large garden hat which threw so dark a shadow over her face that I could master no more of its details than the keen bright eyes. Could this be my cousin Theresa? I was so much astonished by the report of the pistol, and her peremptory address, that I quite forgot my manners. I had hastily put my hat on, and there I kept it. “You may bless your stars,” she exclaimed, “that I didn’t take the curl out of your mustache with a pistol ball. I could do it. Do you doubt me? Turn your face round, so that I get your profile.” And she levelled her pistol full at my head. “Who are you?” I stammered; “and what do you mean to do? Put that pistol down. Don’t you know that you can’t play with a more dangerous toy?” “Turn your face round as I order you, sir,” was her answer. “I shall do no such thing,” I said, picking up my carpet bag, which I had dropped, but furtively watching her movements with indescribable anxiety. “Oh,” she exclaimed, to my inexpressible relief, turning the muzzle of the pistol aside, “if you are _afraid_, that is another matter. However, for the future, when I order you to stop, I should advise you to do so.” And so saying, she wheeled round, and disappeared among the trees. I hastened forward, not doubting for a moment that, whether she was my cousin or not, she was not in possession of her reason, and congratulating myself on what I could not but consider a very narrow escape of my life. In a few moments I reached the house, a fine old building with a great door and many windows, the upper ones hooded, and a broad carpet of grass all round it, on to which the queerest little doors opened, with large bow-windows on the ground-floor. The door was opened by a corpulent man in a claret-coloured livery, and a groggy eye, who, on my asking if Mr. Hargrave was within, cocked his head, and reflected a little before he answered, “He is, sir.” “Well, show me in, and tell Mr. Hargrave I am here.” “I will, sir,” answered the man, whose accent intimated his nationality pretty powerfully. I thought him a bit of a fool, or perhaps new to his place, and entered the hall, remarking, however, that he shrank away from me as I passed him. Burnt up by the sun, and blinded by the glare in the road, and wearied by my walk, and half-choked with dust, and, above all, utterly disgusted with the extraordinary behaviour of the young lady of the avenue, I flung my hat and bag pettishly on the hall table and marched into a long, handsome drawing-room, the fat man-servant meanwhile watching me intently as I entered, and hurriedly banging the door to when I was within.