thickets to the gate.



IV.

CHARLIE STREFFORD'S villa was like a nest in a rose-bush; the
Nelson Vanderlyns' palace called for loftier analogies.

Its vastness and splendour seemed, in comparison, oppressive to
Susy. Their landing, after dark, at the foot of the great
shadowy staircase, their dinner at a dimly-lit table under a
ceiling weighed down with Olympians, their chilly evening in a
corner of a drawing room where minuets should have been danced
before a throne, contrasted with the happy intimacies of Como as
their sudden sense of disaccord contrasted with the mutual
confidence of the day before.

The journey had been particularly jolly: both Susy and Lansing
had had too long a discipline in the art of smoothing things
over not to make a special effort to hide from each other the
ravages of their first disagreement. But, deep down and
invisible, the disagreement remained; and compunction for having
been its cause gnawed at Susy's bosom as she sat in her
tapestried and vaulted bedroom, brushing her hair before a
tarnished mirror.

"I thought I liked grandeur; but this place is really out of
scale," she mused, watching the reflection of a pale hand move
back and forward in the dim recesses of the mirror. "And yet,"