And who was the new tenant?

Come, and see.



In the spring of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight the summer-house had
been the dismal dwelling-place of a pair of owls. In the autumn of the
same year the summer-house was the lively gathering-place of a crowd
of ladies and gentlemen, assembled at a lawn party--the guests of the
tenant who had taken Windygates.

The scene--at the opening of the party--was as pleasant to look at as
light and beauty and movement could make it.

Inside the summer-house the butterfly-brightness of the women in their
summer dresses shone radiant out of the gloom shed round it by the
dreary modern clothing of the men. Outside the summer-house, seen
through three arched openings, the cool green prospect of a lawn led
away, in the distance, to flower-beds and shrubberies, and, farther
still, disclosed, through a break in the trees, a grand stone house
which closed the view, with a fountain in front of it playing in the
sun.

They were half of them laughing, they were all of them talking--the
comfortable hum of their voices was at its loudest; the cheery pealing
of the laughter was soaring to its highest notes--when one dominant
voice, rising clear and shrill above all the rest, called imperatively
for silence. The moment after, a young lady stepped into the vacant
space in front of the summer-house, and surveyed the throng of guests as