CHAPTER THE SECOND.
THE GUESTS.
Who was responsible for the reform of the summer-house?
The new tenant at Windygates was responsible.
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 a general in command surveys a regiment under review.
She was young, she was pretty, she was plump, she was fair.

She was not the least embarrassed by her prominent position.