So I put the letter to Captain Fraser-Freer out of my mind.  I had business acquaintances here and a few English friends, and I found these, as always, courteous and charming.  But it is to my advantage to meet as many people as may be, and after drifting about for a week I set out one afternoon to call on my captain.  I told myself that here was an Englishman who had perhaps thawed a bit in the great oven of India.  If not, no harm would be done.

It was then that I came for the first time to this house on Adelphi Terrace, for it was the address Archie had given me.  Walters let me in, and I learned from him that Captain Fraser-Freer had not yet arrived from India.  His rooms were ready—­he had kept them during his absence, as seems to be the custom over here—­and he was expected soon.  Perhaps—­said Walters—­his wife remembered the date.  He left me in the lower hall while he went to ask her.

Waiting, I strolled to the rear of the hall.  And then, through an open window that let in the summer, I saw for the first time that courtyard which is my great love in London—­the old ivy-covered walls of brick; the neat paths between the blooming beds; the rustic seat; the magic gate.  It was incredible that just outside lay the world’s biggest city, with all its poverty and wealth, its sorrows and joys, its roar and rattle.  Here was a garden for Jane Austen to people with fine ladies and courtly gentlemen—­here was a garden to dream in, to adore and to cherish.

When Walters came back to tell me that his wife was uncertain as to the exact date when the captain would return, I began to rave about that courtyard.  At once he was my friend.  I had been looking for quiet lodgings away from the hotel, and I was delighted to find that on the second floor, directly under the captain’s rooms, there was a suite to be sublet.

Walters gave me the address of the agents; and, after submitting to an examination that could not have been more severe if I had asked for the hand of the senior partner’s daughter, they let me come here to live.  The garden was mine!

And the captain?  Three days after I arrived I heard above me, for the first time, the tread of his military boots.  Now again my courage began to fail.  I should have preferred to leave Archie’s letter lying in my desk and know my neighbor only by his tread above me.  I felt that perhaps I had been presumptuous in coming to live in the same house with him.  But I had represented myself to Walters as an acquaintance of the captain’s and the caretaker had lost no time in telling me that “my friend” was safely home.

So one night, a week ago, I got up my nerve and went to the captain’s rooms.  I knocked.  He called to me to enter and I stood in his study, facing him.  He was a tall handsome man, fair-haired, mustached—­the very figure that you, my lady, in your boarding-school days, would have wished him to be.  His manner, I am bound to admit, was not cordial.