Haskins saw below him a moderately sized quadrangle, smoothly turfed in the center and bordered with beds of flowers stretching to moldering walls. To the right, and straight in front--somewhat after the shape of the letter "L"--were two ranges of a gray stone mansion clothed--as was the wall--with thickly growing ivy. There were two stories, and the architecture was Tudor, picturesque, and graceful. Along the lower story of the front wing were elaborate oriel windows, filled in with lattice-work and, as Gerald shrewdly suspected, with stained glass. An archway pierced this wing, and apparently led to another part of the grounds. The range of buildings on the right was less elaborate, as the windows above and below were square and modern in their looks. To the left were ruinous stables, and outhouses more or less tumbledown, and, of course, the fourth side of the quadrangle was closed in by the wall upon which the young man was seated. What with the gray wall, the beautifully shaped oriels, the peaked roofs of mellow red tiles, and the mantle of greenery which overspread all, the place looked like a picture from the Christmas Number of _The Graphic_. Yet if the house was neglected, the garden and lawn certainly were not. The turf was as smooth as a billiard-table, and the beds of flowers were carefully tended, as he could see from the absence of weeds and the efflorescence of blossoms. These were chiefly those of humble cottage flowers. Tall hollyhocks, golden snapdragon, sweet-william, pansies, marigolds, ragged robin, and musk carnations: all these grew in artistic profusion and confusion, making the quadrangle a world of beauty and color and perfume. In the center of the lawn rose an antique sundial, supported by three battered female figures, and over all this dreamy, old-world haven of rest arched the shadowy sky, blending night and day in vapory blue and rosy flushings. Haskins felt that a new planet had "swam into his ken"--all that he had dreamed of, as too fair for earth, was here transmuted from the ideal into the real. "I must certainly be in Dreamland," thought the young man, "or in Paradise, or in Prospero's Enchanted Island, or in the Vale of Avilion, where it doth neither rain nor snow." But his poetic musings were cut short by a rustle among the coppery leaves of the beech. He looked down from his wall and saw a vision of loveliness rising from the foliage like Undine from the well. "I went to see what Bellaria was doing," explained Mavis breathlessly, and perched on a sloping bough, so near to the wall that the young man could have embraced her without difficulty. He felt very much inclined to do so, for he was rapidly falling fathoms deep in love. But a feeling of respect for the unprotected girl restrained him, and he listened spellbound to the music of her voice. "Bellaria was cooking the supper, you know," went on the girl prosaically, "so there is no chance of her coming to call me for half-an-hour."