Dazzlingly white against the magnificent trees which surrounded it, it stood in the middle of a grassy plateau that rolled gently down to the woodland path in long sloping green terraces.
"How beautiful it looks!" Grace gazed almost reverently at the rambling old house with its wide, high-pillared verandas.

It was like some gracious, stately person whose very watchword was hospitality, she thought.

Built more than a century before, by a long-since departed Upton, it had not been used as a residence by his descendants.

Due to a clause of command in the original owner's will, it had ever afterward been sedulously kept in repair.

To her beauty-loving soul, it now seemed to have taken on a new lease of life.