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The house, in fact, was one of those that have a personality as marked and as mysterious as of a human character It affected people in quite an extraordinary way It took charge of the casual guest, entertained and soothed and sometimes silenced him; and it cast upon all who lived in it an enchanthtful Externally it was nothing ree, square-built house, close indeed to the road, but separated fro, and a short, straight garden-path; originally even ante-Tudor, but h centuries, with a Queen Anne front of mellow red brick, and back preh-cast, with old brew-houses that alain lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all into a dozen rectangles, separated froe down the center of which ran a sheltered path Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip ards lay broad lawns surrounded by high trees co it from all view of the houses that formed the tiny hamlet fifty yards away

Within, the house had been ave entrance to the drawing-rooe, stately roo-rooh to the back, where a s kitchens and back preround floor The two more stories above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large roonified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched chambers, ashed, oak-floored, and dormer-here one or two of the servants slept in splendid isolation A little flight of irregular steps leading out of the big room on to the first floor, where the housekeeper lived in state, gave access to the further rooie had fallen in love with the place from the instant that she had entered it She had been warned in her French convent of the giddy gaieties of the world and its temptations; and yet it seemed to her after a week in her new honed There was here a sense of peace and sheltered security that she had hardly known even at school; and little by little she had settled down here, with the un to seem to her that days spent in London or in other friends' houses were no better than interruptions and failures compared with the leisurely, tender life of this place, where it was so easy to read and pray and possess her soul in peace This affair of Laurie's was almost the first reminder of what she had known by hearsay, that Love and Death and Pain were the bones on which life was modeled