When I got there, I found on the bough which formed my seat a basket of Gloire de Dijon roses, and the stalk of the uppermost one was stuck through a little note. I never doubted those roses were for me; I only wondered who had put them there. I looked searchingly around me in all directions before I took up the rose which carried the note and carefully slipped it off. It contained these words-- “For Miss Christie, with the sincere apologies of some one who would not willingly have offended her for the whole world.” I did not know the writing, but I knew whom it was from. I think, if I had been quite sure that no one could have seen me, I should have raised the note to my lips, I was so happy. But, though I could see no one, the fact of the basket arriving so surely at my secret haunt seemed to argue the existence of a supernatural agency in dealing with which one could not be too discreet; so I only put the note into my pocket and returned to the house with my flowers. I put them in water as soon as I had sneaked upstairs to my room with them. The supernatural agency could not follow me there, so I slept that night with the note under my pillow. CHAPTER VIII. “You are getting pale again, my dear child,” said Mr. Rayner to me the very next morning--he met me, at the foot of the stairs, dressed for my walk with Haidee. “We must find some means of bringing those most becoming roses back to your cheeks again. You work too hard at those self-imposed evening tasks, I am afraid.” “Oh, no, indeed I don’t, Mr. Rayner! I am getting very lazy; I haven’t done anything for two or three nights.” The fact was that I had felt too languid even to sit down and write, and had wasted the last two evenings listlessly turning over the pages of a book I did not read. “Ah, then you want change of air! Now how to give it you without letting you go away--for we can’t spare you even for a week! You will think me a magician if I procure you change of air without leaving this house, won’t you, Miss Christie? Yet I think I can manage it. You must give me a few days to look about for my wand, and then, hey, presto, the thing will be done!”