Page:Zodiac stories by Blanche Mary Channing.pdf/160

Rh peep into the great drawing-room furnished in yellow brocade, whose stiff chairs and sofas repeated themselves over and over in the full-length mirrors around the walls. There was an old, old harpsichord, in one part of the room whose keys he had once ventured to touch, and whose voice sounded sweet though cracked—like that of an old singer. The shades of this room were always drawn down, and the half-light was mysterious. The air was fragrant with the scent of rose-leaves and spices from a big blue china "pot-pourri."

But Paul liked best the old-fashioned garden, a delicious wilderness of clove-pinks and sweet-peas, and I know not what else, with mossy fruit-trees standing up here and there, their old limbs bending under ripening fruit.

Bees haunted this garden and butterflies and dusky moths. It was a place of many delights.

But now all these joys were drawing to