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A pleasant-voiced, white-aproned Scotchwoman met them and made them welcome. “It’s but seldom we see a young leddy here, in these benighted parts, and lonely it is for me all the year round,” she murmured, like another discontented Eve in this beautiful Eden.

Alice talked with her for a time, or rather listened to her repinings, all uttered in the same gentle mournful tones, like the cooings of a wood-pigeon.

“Isn’t it strange that a woman always wants to know ‘what is worn,’ even in a paradise like this?” she observed to Arthur, as the good lady went off at last, in search of more delicacies for her guests.

“I feel much more anxious to know what is eaten,” he replied, looking affectionately at the table, where the shining snowfield of the damask cloth threw into relief the bright silver urn, delicate china, and heaped-up dishes of fruit. “Figs, too! and green almonds in the shells! ‘The Swiss Family Robinson’ was nothing to this, even in our youngest days!”

The two companions at the table might have formed a picture for some Italian painter of the Renaissance, as they sat on the stone terrace, against the rich, leafy, fruited background of the old garden. Something in the situation reminded