"No, Suzette, my mother would rather see me happy than sacrifice my happiness to conventionality. Half a year is a long time for a man whose life seems a thing of shreds and patches, waiting the better fuller life that he longs for. I shall remember my dear father with no less affection; I shall no less regret his loss; when you and I are one. We can be married quietly at nine o'clock in the morning, before Matcham people have finished breakfast, with only your father and aunt, and my mother, for witnesses; and we can slip away from the station in the fresh September morning on the first stage of our journey to Como. Such a lovely journey at that season, Suzie! It will still be summer in Italy, and we can stay late in October, till the grapes are all gathered and the berceaus are getting bare, and then we can come back to Matcham to our own cosy fireside, and amuse ourselves with the arrangement of our house. It will be as new to me as it will be to you, Suzie, for only when you are its mistress will it be home." Suzette could hardly withhold her consent, her lover being so earnest. It was settled that the marriage should take place early in September; and this being decided, the current of life flowed smoothly on, Allan spending more of his days at Marsh House, The Grove, and Discombe, than in his own house, except when Lady Emily was with him. Discombe was by far the most delightful of these three houses in out-of-door weather, pleasant as were Mrs. Mornington's carefully tended grounds and shrubberies, her verandah and spacious conservatory. The gardens at Discombe had that delicious flavour of the old world, and that absolute seclusion which can never be enjoyed in grounds that are within ear-shot of a high-road. At Discombe the long grass walks, the walls of ilex and of yew, the cypress avenues, and marble temples were isolated amidst surrounding woods, nearly a mile away from the traffic of everyday life. There was a sense of quiet and privacy here, compared with which Marsh House and the Grove were scarcely superior to the average villa in a newly developed suburb. The seasons waxed and waned; the month of May, when the woodland walks round Discombe were white with the feathery bloom of the mountain ash, and golden with the scented blossoms of the yellow azalea; and June, which filled the woodland avenues with a flush of purple rhododendrons, masses of bloom, in an ascending scale of colour from the deep bass of darkest purple to the treble of palest lilac; and July, with her lap full of roses that made the gardens as brilliant as a picture by Alma Tadèma. "I always tell the gardeners that if they give me roses I will forgive them all the rest," said Mrs. Wornock, when Allan complimented her upon her banquet of bloom; arches of roses, festoons of roses, temples built of roses, roses in beds and borders, everywhere. "But your men are model gardeners; they neglect nothing."