The runabout chugged to Blue Meadows in less than ten minutes. The road branched off from the State highway at the least frequented place in its ample stretch; ran for a long way to West Quinanog. On this side road, houses were few and they grew fewer and fewer until they left Blue Meadows quite by itself. Its situation, though solitary, was not lonely. It sat near the road. Perhaps, Lindsay decided, it would have been too near if stately wine-glass elms, feathered with leaves all along their lissom trunks, in collaboration with a high lilac hedge now past its blooming, had not helped to sequester it. From the street, the house showed only a roof with two capacious chimneys, the upper story of its gray clapboarded façade. Dick, a gangling freckled youth, slowed down the machine as if in preparation for a stop. "I've got the key," he volunteered, "if you want to go in." Until that moment Lindsay had entertained no idea of going in. But Dick's words fired his imagination. "Thanks, I think I will." Dick handed over the long, delicately wrought key. He made no move to follow Lindsay out of the car. "If you don't mind," he said, "I'll run down the road to see a cousin of mine. How soon before you'll want to start back?" "Oh, give me half an hour or so," Lindsay decided carelessly. The runabout chugged into the green arch which imprisoned the distance. Alone, Lindsay strolled between lilac bushes and over the sunken flags which led to the front door. Then, changing his mind, he made an appraising tour about the outside of the place. Blue Meadows was a big old house: big, so it seemed to his amateur judgment, by an incredible number of rooms; and old--and here his judgment, though swift, was more accurate--to the time of two hundred years. Outside, it had all the earmarks of Colonial architecture--plain lines, stark walls, the windows, with twenty-four lights, geometrically placed; but its lovely lines, its beautiful proportions, and the soft plushy nap which time had laid upon its front clapboardings mitigated all its severities. The shingles of the roof and sides were weather-beaten and gray, the blinds a deep old blue. At one side jutted an incongruous modern addition; into the second story of which was set a galleried piazza. At the other side stretched an endless series of additions, tapering in size to a tiny shed. "This is Lutetia's house!" Lindsay stopped to muse. "Is it true that I spent two years with the French Army? Is it true that I served two more with the American Army? Oh, to think you didn't live to see all that, Lutetia!" A lattice arched over the doorway and on it a big climbing rose was just coming into bud. The beautiful door showed the pointed architrave, the leaded side panels, the fanlight, the engaged columns, of Colonial times. It resisted the first attack of the key, but yielded finally to Lindsay's persuasion. He stepped into the hall.