Two of the best rooms in the house were prepared for the expected guests, and a couple of garret rooms allotted to the two maids who were to accompany the ladies. On a lovely May afternoon the coach with Madame Isabey and Madame Le Noir was due at Harrowby. Never had the old manor house looked sweeter than on this golden afternoon of late springtime. The great clumps of syringas and snowballs, like giant bouquets on the green lawn, were in splendid leaf and flower, and flooded the blue air with their perfume. The old garden was in the first glory of its blossoming, and the ancient wall at the end, where stood the bench called Angela’s, could scarcely support the odorous beauty of the lilacs, white and purple. The river singing its ceaseless song ran smiling and dimpling to the sea. All was peace outwardly, although peace was riven within the household. Angela was palpitating with excitement at the thought of the strangers’ arrival. She had never seen anyone in her life from a place as far off as New Orleans, except Isabey and Lyddon. The ladies of high degree, who were to arrive, belonged in a way to Isabey, and it was through him that they were invited to take up their domicile at Harrowby. Angela dressed herself carefully in a pale-green muslin left over from last year. There had been no question of new gowns for women that year; an army of men had to be clothed and shod, and for that the women of the South heroically sacrificed their fal-lals. Mrs. Tremaine, herself, placid and dignified, was secretly a little agitated at the coming advent of these strange new guests. Luckily, Hector being absent, everything went on properly in the department of the dining room, and there were no complications about lost keys, disappearing brandy bottles, and the usual corollary of a butler with magnificent manners, a disinclination for work, and a tendency to steep his soul in the Lethe of forgetfulness. Toward five o’clock, everything being in perfect preparation, Angela went into the garden to pace up and down the long walk and think, to speculate, to dream chiefly of Isabey, for she had not succeeded in putting him out of her mind. As she passed across the lawn she met George Charteris about to return to Greenhill. He went by her with a sort of angry indifference. Angela noticed this without feeling it. She seemed not four years but a whole decade older than George Charteris, and eons seemed to have passed since she was flattered by his boyish admiration.