In a few minutes they passed through the ruined gate in the edge of the woods. The broken marble figures which once crowned the brick pillars lay beside the entrance among a mass of tangled blackberry briars. They had been pried from their places and hurled there by the bayonets of Sherman’s men and had not been touched since. The lawn, which once had spread its beautiful carpet of flowers and shrubbery in wide acres here in the heart of the ancient woods, had grown up in ugly broom straw and young pines, which were slowly strangling to death the more delicate forms of life. The dark fir trees, magnolia and holly, still flourished in luxury. Towering in solemn, serried line on a gentle eminence still stood the six great white Corinthian pillars of the front façade of the house. Behind them in dark background a row of Norwegian firs, fifty years old, marked the sky line. The afternoon sun cast the shadows of the trees across the fluted marble of two of the pillars, while the other four shimmered in the splendour of the sunlight. The capitals of the columns had fallen with the blazing ruins of the house, but the bases and tall beautiful fluted forms of each were yet perfect. The ivy which had grown on the sides of the stone steps had climbed in unbridled riot over one of them and hung in graceful festoons from the top. To Stella’s fancy they seemed grim white sentinels guarding the entrance to some vast empire of the dead. “How still and death-like everything is,” she said, with a timid glance about her. “We seem a thousand miles from life.” He took her hand. “When I stand by your side, in every silent space I hear the beating of the wings of angels.” “The wings of the angel of Death here, I should think!” she said in strange subdued tones, as her eyelids drooped and she looked away. “Away with such nonsense,” he cried, cheerily. “I’ve something to do before I dare to speak to you again of the love that is in my heart.” He led her behind the towering columns, and, at the rear of the ruins of the heavy brick walls, entered the basement by a stairway half covered with fallen débris. The floors of the first story which had been constructed of iron and cement foundations had remained unbroken. The basement, once entered below the ruins, was in a state of perfect preservation. They entered the immense kitchen whose walls had once echoed with the voices of swarms of indolent well-fed slaves. Stella looked about her in amazement, asking with a slight tremor in her voice: “Why have you brought me here?” “To place my life in your hands, joyously, without a single reservation,” he said with deep earnestness. “You are in the council chamber of the Invisible Empire. Here its High Court of Life and Death was held.” Stella’s breath quickened and she glanced at John with furtive eyes. “I should have told you frankly at first. You had the right to know before you gave your life into my keeping.”