seldom there; having, as it seemed, no love for the place, and
living for the most part abroad and alone, for he never married.

And again, many years went by. The trees grew taller and darker
about the house; the yew hedges unclipt now, hung their branches
over the moss-grown paths; ivy almost smothered the statues; and
the plaster fell away in great patches from the discoloured
garden temples.

But at last one day a chariot drove up to the gates; a footman
pulled at the crazy bell, telling the gate-keeper that his
mistress wished to visit the Park. So the gates creaked open,
the chariot glittered up the avenue to the deserted place; and a
lady stepped out, went into the garden, and walked among its
moss-grown paths and statues. As the chariot drove out again,
"Tell your Lord," the lady said, smiling, to the lodge-keeper,
"that Silvia Doria came back."




_Bligh House_


To the West, in riding past the walls of Bligh, I remembered an
incident in the well-known siege of that house, during the Civil
Wars: How, among Waller's invading Roundhead troops, there
happened to be a young scholar, a poet and lover of the Muses,
fighting for the cause, as he thought, of ancient Freedom, who,
one day, when the siege was being more hotly urged, pressing