MY LITTLE LADY.




CHAPTER I.

In the Garden.


There are certain days in the lives of each one of us, which
come in their due course without special warning, to which we
look forward with no anticipations of peculiar joy or sorrow,
from which beforehand we neither demand nor expect more than
the ordinary portion of good and evil, and which yet through
some occurrence--unconsidered perhaps at the moment, but
gaining in significance with years and connecting events--are
destined to live apart in our memories to the end of our
existence. Such a day in Horace Graham's life was a certain
hot Sunday in August, that he spent at the big hotel at
Chaudfontaine.

Every traveller along the great high road leading from
Brussels to Cologne knows Chaudfontaine, the little village
distant about six miles from Liége, with its church, its big
hotel, and its scattered cottages, partly forges, partly
restaurants, which shine white against a dark green background
of wooded hills, and gleam reflected in the clear tranquil
stream by which they stand. On every side the hills seem to