The estate, which was of great extent, and produced nothing whatever, since, to Mrs. Palmer's way of thinking, to live on an estate which produced anything was of the nature of keeping a shop, was all pressed into the amiable service of providing entertainment for the guests, and of showing the wondering world a specimen of the delectable life. For several miles the road through the woods had been run in artfully contrived gradients, carried on struts over too precipitous ravines, and quarried through cuttings to avoid undesirable steepnesses. The sides of the cuttings were admirably planted, and creepers and ivy covered the balustrades of the bridges. A golf-course, smooth as a billiard-table, and not too heavily bunkered, lay near the house, and Mrs. Palmer had tried a most original experiment last year of stocking the woods with all sorts of game, to provide mixed shooting for a couple of parties in the autumn. This had not been wholly a success, for the deer she had turned out were so tame that they gazed in timid welcome at the shooters, probably expecting to be fed, till they fell riddled with bullets, while the pheasants were so wild that nobody could touch a tail-feather. But the costume of the _chasseurs_--green velvet, very Robin-Hoody--had been most tasteful, and she herself, armed with a tiny pea-rifle and dressed in decent imitation of Atalanta, had shot a roebuck and a beater, the latter happily not fatally. From the centre of the terrace on the east, which had been brought over entire from a needy Italian palace, a broad flight of steps of rose-coloured marble led down to the sea. A small breakwater was sufficient to provide station and anchorage for the two steam-yachts and smaller pleasure-boats, but otherwise the shore had not been meddled with. There was a charming beach of sand, and a little further on a fringe of seaweed-covered rock-pools. Behind this was a small natural lagoon in a depression in the sandy foreshore, some half-acre in extent, fed by a stream that came down through the woods, but brackish through the infiltration of the salt water. This that highly original woman had chosen to be the scene of the fête which was to astonish society next week; but the secret had been well kept, and no one except Reggie Armstrong knew the precise details of the new surprise. For a fortnight or so, however, it was common knowledge that a great many large pans wrapped in tarpaulin had been arriving, and the shore had been populous with men who plied some sort of bare-legged avocation, which implied wading in the lagoon. But the foreman of the company who was executing Mrs. Palmer's orders had received notice that if any word of what was being done leaked out or reached the papers, at that moment all work would be suspended, and the firm would never have another order from her. She herself, sometimes alone, sometimes with Reggie, inspected the work; otherwise no one was allowed near the place.