At the particular time I am writing of, he had just settled down for the summer in a very special “ideal” on the coast of Devon. It was a house which had formerly belonged to an artist, but the artist had recently died, and his handsome and not inconsolable widow stated that she found it dull. She was glad to let it for two or three months, in order to “get away” with that restless alacrity which distinguishes so many people who find anything better than their own homes, and Mr. and Mrs. Polydore May, though, as they said, it certainly was “a little quiet after London,” were glad to have it, at quite a moderate rental for the charming place it really was. The gardens were exquisitely laid out and carefully kept; the smooth velvety lawns ran down almost to the sea, where a little white gate opened out from the green of the grass to the gold of the sand,--the rooms were tastefully furnished, and Diana, when she first saw the place, going some days in advance of her father and mother, as was her wont, in order to make things ready and comfortable for them, thought how happy she could be if only such a house and garden were hers to enjoy, independently of others. For a week before her respected and respectable parents came, in the intervals of unpacking, and arranging matters so that the domestic “staff” could assume their ordinary duties with smoothness and regularity, she wandered about alone, exploring the beauties of her surroundings, her thin, flat figure striking a curious note of sadness and solitude, as she sometimes stood in the garden among a wealth of flowers, looking out to the tender dove-grey line of the horizon across the sea. The servants peeping at her from kitchen and pantry windows, made their own comments. “Poor dear!” said the cook, thoughtfully--“she do wear thin!” “Ah, it’s a sad look-out for ’er!” sighed the upper housemaid, who was engaged to a pork-butcher with an alarmingly red face, whom one would have thought any self-respecting young woman would have died rather than wedded. “To be all alone in the world like that, unpertected, as she will be when her pa and ma have gone!” “Well, they won’t go in a hurry!” put in the butler, who was an observing man--“Leastways, Mr. May won’t; he’ll ’old on to life like a cat to a mouse--_he_ will! He’s _that_ hearty!--why, he thinks he’s about thirty instead of sixty. The missis, now,--if she goes on eating as she do,--she’ll drop off sudden like a burstin’ bean,--but _he_!--Ah! I shouldn’t wonder if he outlasted us all!” “Lor, Mr. Jonson!” exclaimed the upper housemaid--“How you do talk!--and you such a young man too!” Jonson smiled, inwardly flattered. He was well over forty, but like his master wished to be considered a kind of youth, fit for dancing, tennis and other such gamesome occupations.