“I will show you.”  They walked together to the lower end of the lawn, where a long line of glass houses built against the high wall which separated the garden from the street called Bishop’s Lane, sheltered the grapes and the pine-apples.  At the end of this conservatory, in the wall, was a little door of thin but strong steel plates, concealed from sight by a row of pear trees.  Farnham opened it, and said, “If you like, you can come in by this way.  It is never locked in the daytime.  It will save you a long walk.”

“Thanks,” she replied.  “That will be perfectly lovely.”

Her resources of expression were not copious, but her eyes and her mouth spoke volumes of joy and gratitude.  Her hands were full of roses, and as she raised her beautiful face to him with pleasure flashing from her warm cheeks and lips and eyes, she seemed to exhale something of the vigorous life and impulse of the spring sunshine.  Farnham felt that he had nothing to do but stoop and kiss the blooming flower-like face, and in her exalted condition she would have thought little more of it than a blush-rose thinks of the same treatment.

But he refrained, and said “Good morning,” because she seemed in no mood to say it first.

“Good-by, for a day or two,” she said, gayly, as she bent her head to pass under the low lintel of the gate.

Farnham walked back to the house not at all satisfied with himself.  “I wonder whether I have mended matters?  She is certainly too pretty a girl to be running in and out of my front door in the sight of all the avenue.  How much better will it be for her to use the private entrance, and come and go by a sort of stealth!  But then she does not regard it that way.  She is so ignorant of this wicked world that it seems to her merely a saving of ten minutes’ walk around the block.  Well! all there is of it, I must find a place for her before she domesticates herself here.”

The thought of what should be done with her remained persistently with him and kept him irritated by the vision of her provoking and useless beauty.  “If she were a princess,” he thought, “all the poets would be twanging their lyres about her, all the artists would be dying to paint her; she would have songs made to her, and sacred oratorios given under her patronage.  She would preside at church fairs and open the dance at charity balls.  If I could start her in life as a princess, the thing would go on wheels.  But to earn her own living—­that is a trade of another complexion.  She has not breeding or education enough for a governess:  she is not clever enough to write or paint; she is not steady enough, to keep accounts,—­by the Great Jornada!  I have a grievous contract on my hands.”

He heard the sound of hoofs outside his window, and, looking out, saw his groom holding a young brown horse by the bridle, the well-groomed coat of the animal shining in the warm sunlight.  In a few moments Farnham was in the saddle and away.  For awhile he left his perplexities behind, in the pleasure of rapid motion and fresh air.  But he drew rein half an hour afterward at Acland Falls, and the care that had sat on the crupper came to the front again.  “As a last resort,” he said, “I can persuade her she has a voice, and send her to Italy, and keep her the rest of her life cultivating it in Milan.”