He walked slowly across the smooth, well-kept grass. Everything was changed and improved by the altered season. House and grounds seemed new to him. He remembered the flower-garden on the left of the house, the cheerless garden without a flower, where he had walked in the bleak winter mornings, smoking his solitary cigar; he remembered the walled fruit-garden beyond, to which he had seen that strange guest admitted under cover of darkness. The thought of that night scene in the winter disturbed him even to-day, despite the apparent frankness of Laura’s explanation. ‘I suppose there is a mystery in every life,’ he said, with a sigh; ‘and, after all, what can it matter to me?’ He had heard nothing of the change in Miss Malcolm’s plans, and supposed the house abandoned to the care of servants. He was surprised to see the drawing-room windows open, flowers on the tables, and a look of domesticity everywhere. He went past the house and into the flower-garden, a garden of the Dutch school, prim and formal, with long, straight walks, box borders, junipers clipped into obelisks, a dense yew hedge, eight feet high, with arches cut in it to give admittance to the adjoining orchard. The beds and borders were a blaze of red and yellow tulips, which shone out against the verdure of the close-shorn bowling-green and the tawny hue of the gravel, and made a feast of vivid colour, like the painted windows of a cathedral. John Treverton, who had not seen such a garden for years, was almost dazzled by its homely beauty. He walked slowly to the end of the long path, looking about him in dreamy contentment. The sweet, soft air, the sunshine--just at that quiet hour of the afternoon when the light begins to be golden--the whistling of the blackbirds in the shrubbery, the freshness and beauty of all things, steeped his soul in a new delight. His life of late had been spent in cities, fenced from the beauty of earth by a wilderness of walls, the glory of heaven screened by smoke, the air thick and foul with the breath of men. This placid garden scene was as new to him as if he had come straight from the bottom of a mine. Presently he stopped, as if struck with a new thought, looked straight before him, and muttered between clenched teeth:-- ‘I shall be a fool if I let it slip from my hand.’ ‘It’ meant Hazlehurst Manor, and the lands and fortune thereto belonging. He was standing within a few yards of the yew-tree hedge, and just at this moment the green arch opposite him became the frame of a living picture, and that a lovely one. Laura Malcolm stood there, bareheaded, dressed in black, with a basket of flowers upon her arm--Laura, whom he had no idea of meeting in this place. The western sky was behind her, and she stood, a tall, slim figure in straight, black drapery, against a golden background, like a saint in an early Italian picture, an edge of light upon her chestnut hair making almost an aureole, her face in shadow.