Strathorn House! A noble dwelling, massive, gray! And yet one that lifted itself with charming lightness from its solid, baronial-like foundation! It adorned the spot, merged into the landscape. Behind, the forest, a dark line, penciled itself against the blue horizon; before the ancient stone pile lay a park. Noble trees guarded the walks, threw over them great gnarled limbs or delicately-trailing branches. Between, the interspaces glowed bright with flowers; amid all, a little lake shone like a silver shield bearing at its center a marble pavilion.
Long the man looked; through a faint veil of mist, turret and tower quivered; strong lines of masonry vibrated. Wavering as in the spell of an optical illusion, the structure might have seemed but a figment of imagination, or one of those fanciful castles sung by the Elizabethan brotherhood of poets. Did the image occur to John Steele, did he feel for the time, despite other disquieting, extraneous thoughts, the subtle enchantment of the scene? The minutes passed; he did not move.
"You find it to your liking?"
A voice, fresh, gay, interrupted; with a great start, he turned.
Jocelyn Wray, for it was she, laughed; so absorbed had he been, he had not heard her light footstep on the grass behind.
"You find it to your liking?" she repeated, tilting quizzically her fair head.
His face changing, "Entirely!" he managed to say. And then, "I--did not know you were near."
"No? But I could see that. Confess," with accent a little derisory, "I startled you." As she spoke she leaned slightly back against the low stone wall of the churchyard; the shifting light through the leaves played over her; her eyes seemed to dance in consonance with that movement.
