* * * * * It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House. Her eyes were downcast. She followed her Aunt demurely over the house and the grounds. "Your decision," said my great-uncle's solicitor, "has to be given within the hour." "My cousin and I will announce it within that time," I said and I at once gave her my arm. Arrived at the sundial we stopped. "This is my proposal," I said: "we will say that we decide that the house is yours--we will spend the L20,000 in restoring it and the grounds. By the time that's done we can decide who is to have it." "But how?" "Oh, we'll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like." "I'd rather decide now," she said; "_you_ take it." "No, _you_ shall." "I'd rather you had it. I--I don't feel so greedy as I did yesterday," she said. "Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way." "Do--do take the house," she said very earnestly. Then I said: "My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make you an offer of marriage." "_Oh!_" she breathed. "And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate, it will become an asylum. Don't be obdurate. Pretend to take the house and----" She looked at me rather piteously. "Very well," she said, "I will pretend to take the house, and when it is restored----" "We'll spin the penny." So before the waiting relations the house was adjudged to my cousin Selwyn. When the restoration was complete I met Selwyn at the sundial. We had met there often in the course of the restoration, in which business we both took an extravagant interest. "Now," I said, "we'll spin the penny. Heads you take the house, tails it comes to me." I spun the coin--it fell on the brick steps of the sundial, and stuck upright there, wedged between two bricks. She laughed; I laughed. "It's not _my_ house," I said. "It's not _my_ house," said she. "Dear," said I, and we were neither of us laughing then, "can't it be _our_ house?" And, thank God, our house it is. II THE POWER OF DARKNESS