After tea Mr. Smithson’s visitors, most of whom had arrived in Sir George’s drag, explored the grounds.  These were lovely beyond expression in the low afternoon light.  Cedars of Lebanon spread their broad shadows on the velvet lawn, yews and Wellingtonias of mighty growth made an atmosphere of gloom in some parts of the grounds.  One great feature was the Ladies’ Garden, a spot apart, a great square garden surrounded with a laurel wall, eight feet high, containing a rose garden, where the choicest specimens grew and flourished, while in the centre there was a circular fish-pond with a fountain.  There was a Lavender Walk too, another feature of the grounds at Rood Hall, an avenue of tall lavender bushes, much affected by the stately dames of old.

Modern manners preferred the river terrace, as a pleasant place on which to loiter after dinner, to watch the boats flashing by in the evening light, or the sun going down behind a fringe of willows on the opposite bank.  This Italian terrace, with its statues, and carved vases filled with roses, fuchsias, and geraniums, was the great point of rendezvous at Rood Hall—­an ideal spot whereon to linger in the deepening twilight, from which to gaze upon the moonlit river later on in the night.

The windows of the drawing-room, and music-room, and ballroom opened on to this terrace, and the royal wing—­the tower-shaped wing now devoted to Lady Lesbia, looked upon the terrace and the river.

’Lovely, as your house is altogether, I think this river view is the best part of it,’ said Lady Lesbia, as she strolled with Mr. Smithson on the terrace after dinner, dressed in Indian muslin which was almost as poetical as a vapour, and with a cloud of delicate lace wrapped round her head.  ’I think I shall spend half of my life at my boudoir window, gloating over that delicious landscape.’

Horace Meander, the poet, was discoursing to a select group upon that peculiar quality of willows which causes them to shiver, and quiver, and throw little lights and shadows on the river, and on the subtle, ineffable beauty of twilight, which perhaps, however utterly beautiful in the abstract, would have been more agreeable to him personally if he had not been surrounded by a cloud of gnats, which refused to be buffeted off his laurel-crowned head.

While Mr. Meander poetised in his usual eloquent style, Mrs. Mostyn, as a still newer light, discoursed as eloquently to little a knot of women, imparting valuable information upon the anatomical structure and individual peculiarities of those various insects which are the pests of a summer evening.

‘You don’t like gnats!’ exclaimed the lady; ’how very extraordinary.  Do you know I have spent days and weeks upon the study of their habits and dear little ways.  They are the most interesting creatures—­far superior to us in intellect.  Do you know that they fight, and that they have tribes which are life-long enemies—­like those dreadful Corsicans—­and