The first was a fair young lady of surpassing beauty. She
strolled pensively down the green turf, cast a hasty glance in at the
workshop, and not seeing Hope, concluded he was a little tired after his
journey, and had not yet arrived. She strolled slowly down then, and
seated herself in a large garden chair, stuffed, that Hope had made, and
placed there for Colonel Clifford. That worthy frequented the spot
because he had done so for years, and because it was a sweet turfy slope;
and there was a wonderful beech-tree his father had made him plant when
he was five years old. It had a gigantic silvery stem, and those giant
branches which die crippled in a beech wood but really belong to the
isolated tree, as one Virgil discovered before we were born. Mary Bartley
then lowered her parasol, and settled into the Colonel's chair under the
shade _patulae fagi_--of the wide-spreading beech-tree.
She sat down and sighed. Monckton eyed her from his lurking-place, and
made a shrewd guess who she was, but resolved to know.
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