which we were not Latin scholars enough at the time to be able to translate, but which I afterwards learnt meant "Thou knowest not at what hour. Watch!" I wondered, as I looked, how many footsteps, in the centuries that had fled, had passed up and down that terraced walk, and how many quaint little maidens as young and gay as we, had come to tell the time by that dial, and had read that same motto, "wrought in dead days by men a long while dead". The blossom from the almond-tree above fell on us like pink snow, and a thrush in the lilac bush was ruffling every feather on his little throat in the rapture of his spring song. "If I could choose any spot in the world I wished, I think I should come to live here," I said, with a long sigh of content as I looked over the sweet-brier fence down the valley to where in the distance gleamed the bay, a faint gray streak against a patch of yellow sand, with the outline of the fells rising up misty and blue behind. Cathy smiled. "You haven't seen the house yet," she said. "You couldn't live only in a garden." "I should like to," I replied. "I'd any time rather have a cottage with a beautiful garden, than the most splendid mansion without one. I think out-of-doors is so much nicer than indoors. Perhaps it's my bringing up. In San Carlos we lived mostly in the verandah and on the terrace." The house proved to be a quaint old stone manor, not large, and quite unpretentious, the kind of dwelling that was built in days gone by for the younger sons of gentry, who farmed a little land, and rode to hounds. Cathy begged the key from the care-taker at the lodge, and we wandered round the panelled rooms, wondering at the black oak beams of the ceilings, and the delightful ingle-nooks of the wide old-fashioned fireplaces. "How splendid they would look full of blazing logs!" said Cathy. "These old walls ought to be hung with garlands of holly and mistletoe. It would just be the place for a Christmas party." One room especially fascinated me. It was a small chamber half-way up the stairs, built above the porch, with a large mullioned window from which one looked out over the garden to the very limit of the horizon. The chimney-piece was richly carved, and panelled with coats of arms, but the central panel was occupied by a small oil-painting of a laughing girl, with lace ruffles and flowered bodice, whose fair hair fell in loose curls over her neck and shoulders. So lifelike was the portrait, that for a moment I felt as if the parted red lips were about to speak, and almost waited for the words, while the bright eyes seemed to look out from the wall as if they were following us round the room. In the extreme right-hand corner of the picture was painted the name: "Philippa Lovell".