I'm dreadfully sorry," she added, with mock penitence.

"I suppose, however, SOMETHING must have happened here." "There may have been nobody in the house at the time," said Paul gravely.

"The family may have been at the baths." They stood close together, their elbows resting upon the broken wall, and almost touching.

Beyond the abyss and darker forest they could see the more vivid green and regular lines of the plane-trees of Strudle Bad, the glitter of a spire, or the flash of a dome.

From the abyss itself arose a cool odor of moist green leaves, the scent of some unseen blossoms, and around the baking vines on the hot wall the hum of apparently taskless and disappointed bees.