"Aren't you going to bed?" she asked him.
"Presently," he said. "I'm going to walk round for a while."
She hovered for a moment, seemed to hesitate, to weigh the attractions of
walking round. It had a charm. Then she decided.
"Good-night," she bade him for the third time.
He grumbled his good-night, and watched her fade into the dark. Not until
she was completely hidden up did he put on his hat again. Then he prowled
noiselessly about among the breathing flowers.
III
Wanless, as they call it there,--Wanless Hall, Felsboro', as it is
politically,--stands squarely and deeply in the hills of a northern
county, plentifully embowered in trees, with a river washing its southern
side. To reach house from river you ascend a gentle slope of lawns and
groves for some hundreds of feet, then find a broad stepway. That takes
you to a terraced, parapeted garden very well tended, as one should be
which has four men at its disposition. There stands the house of Wanless,
stone-built in the days of Charles the Second--a gleaming, grey front,
covered to the first-floor windows with a magnolia of unknown age. The
main entrance faces north, from which point the true shape of the place is
revealed as a long body with wings, an E-shaped house.
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