entering the grounds the carriage avenue wound away from the gate, so
that the passer-by could see nothing as he looked through but the hedge
which skirted and concealed the lawn. The fence upon the road was a high,
solid stone wall, along whose top clustered a dense shrubbery, so that,
although the land rose from the road toward the house, the lawn was
entirely sequestered; and you might sit upon it and enjoy the pleasant
rural prospect of fields, woods, and hills, without being seen from the
road. The house itself was a stately, formal mansion. Its light color
contrasted well with the lofty pine-trees around it. But they, in turn,
invested it with an air of secrecy and gloom, unrelieved by flowers or
blossoming shrubs, of which there were no traces near the house, although
in the rear there was a garden so formally regular that it looked like a
penitentiary for flowers.

These were the pine-trees that Hope Wayne had heard sing all her
life--but sing like the ocean, not like birds or human voices. In the
black autumn midnights they struggled with the north winds that smote
them fiercely and filled the night with uproar, while the child cowering
in her bed thought of wrecks on pitiless shores--of drowning mothers and
hapless children. Through the summer nights they sighed. But it was not
a lullaby--it was not a serenade. It was the croning of a Norland
enchantress, and young Hope sat at her open window, looking out into
the moonlight, and listening.

Abel Newt opened the gate and passed in. He walked along the avenue, from
which the lawn was still hidden by the skirting hedge, went up the steps,
and rang the bell.

"Is Mr. Burt at home?" he asked, quietly.