“The man suits the house, does he not?” said Mrs. Brantley to Mrs. Lancaster.  “It is like a vintage of rare old wine in an old bottle.  We fancy that it has an aroma which it would lose in a new cut-glass decanter.”

“I always thought Major Clare had delightful manners,” said Mrs. Lancaster, who could not trust herself to say anything more.  She felt with a pang how much she would have liked to bring wealth and prosperity and elegant hospitality back again to the old house, if its owner had not been so madly blind to his own interest, so absurdly in love with Eleanor Milbourne’s statue-like face, so insanely intent upon periling life and limb in the service of the viceroy of Egypt.  The pretty widow gave a sigh as she arranged her hair before the quaint, old-fashioned mirror in the chamber to which the ladies had been conducted.  If he had only been reasonable, how different things might be!  She walked to a window which overlooked the garden with its formal walks and terraces, its borders of box and summer-houses of cedar.  “He will change his mind before the month is out,” she thought.  “A man cannot surrender all the associations of his past and the home of his fathers without a struggle.”

This consideration lost some of its consoling force, however, when, a few minutes later, two people, walking slowly and evidently talking earnestly, passed down the vista of one of the garden alleys, and were lost to sight behind a tall, clipped hedge.  Even at that distance there was no mistaking the figure and bearing of Clare; neither was there another woman who walked with that free, stately grace in a riding-habit which Eleanor Milbourne possessed.  “If she is engaged to Marston Brent, he might certainly put an end to such open flirtation as this,” Mrs. Lancaster said between her teeth.  “If he were not blind or mad, he might see that she is so much in love with Victor that she would go with him to Egypt to-morrow if he asked her to do so.”

An old and sensible proverb with which we are all acquainted says that it is never well to judge others by ourselves; and if Mrs. Lancaster had possessed the invisible cap of the prince in the fairy-tale, and had followed the pair who had just passed out of sight, she would have received an immediate proof of the truth of this aphorism.  They had paused in a square near the heart of the garden—­a green, shaded spot, in the centre of which an empty basin bore witness to a departed fountain, though no pleasant murmur of water had broken the stillness for many a long day.  Round the margin of this still ran a seat on which Eleanor sat down.  Victor remained standing before her.  A lime tree near by cast a soft, flickering shadow over them, and the tall hedges of evergreen which enclosed the square made a sombre but effective background.

“You see that ruin and decay are all that I have to offer you here,” Victor was saying with a cadence of bitterness in his voice.  “But if you had courage enough to end the life which you despise, to cut loose from all the ties which bind you in America, and go with me to Egypt, there I might have a future and a career for you to share—­there at least, you would find freedom and action and life.”