Anything that occurred in ’forty-six had such a charm for Colonel Berkeley that Miles knew he was in for it. The Colonel took his arm and trotted up and down the portico, pointing out various ways in which the late Mr. Pembroke, his devoted friend, had neglected the Colonel’s advice in regard to farming, and the numberless evils that had resulted therefrom. Colonel Berkeley entirely forgot that his own farming was not above reproach, and if he had been reduced to his land for a living, instead of that lucky property at the North that he had so strenuously tried to make way with, he would indeed have been in a bad way. But the Colonel was a famous farmer on paper, was president of the Farmers’ Club of the county, had published several pamphlets on subsoil drainage, and was a frequent contributor to the columns of the Southern Planter before the war. Cave and Olivia, finding themselves temporarily thrown on each other, concluded to walk through the grounds. Madame Koller and her mother had not yet arrived, and under the huge trees, a little distance off, they could see Pembroke talking with his visitor, as the latter mounted his horse to ride away. In former days the grounds, like the house, had been fine, but now they were completely overgrown and neglected, yet, there was a kind of beauty in their very wildness. “How charming this wilderness of roses will be when they are in bloom,” said Olivia, as they walked through what had once been a rose walk, stiff and prim, now rioting in lush luxuriance. “I remember it quite straight, and the rose trees trimmed up all in exactly the same shape--and see, the roses have climbed so over the arbor that we can’t get in.” Cave said nothing. The one love of his life was born and lived and died in this home. He could see, through a rift in the trees, the brick wall around the burying ground where Elizabeth lay. It was fallen away in many places, and the sheep browsed peacefully over the mounds. The marble slab over Elizabeth was as yet new and white. Still Olivia did not jar on him at that moment. She was innately sympathetic. They paced slowly about the graveled paths overgrown in many places with weeds, and among a vigorous growth of young shrubbery, unpruned and unclipped. She pulled a great branch of pink dogwood from a transplanted forest tree, and swayed it thoughtfully as she walked. Presently they saw Pembroke coming to look for them. As he approached and took Olivia’s hand, a color as delicate as that of the dogwood blossoms she held in her other hand, mounted to her face. Then they turned back leisurely toward the house. At one spot, under a great linden tree, was the basin of a fountain, all yellow and choked with the trailing arbutus, which grew with the wild profusion that marks it in the depth of the woods. The fountain was long since gone. Pembroke plucked some of the arbutus and handed it to Olivia, taking from her the dogwood branch at the same time and throwing it away.