CHAPTER III.

YOUNG LOVE, TRUE LOVE.

 

It was Christmas-time, many years after the events narrated in the previous chapter, and the snow not only lay thick on the ground but was falling heavily from a leaden sky. A strong wind which rose with the coming of the night drove through the leafless trees of the park and clashed iron music from among their frozen boughs.

Beyond the red brick wall which encircled Hollyoaks Park the frozen road ran straight to the village of Westham, and the one street of that hamlet was crowded with people returning homeward laden with purchases for the next day.

But if it was wintry out of doors, within the mansion of Mr. Cass all was colour and warmth and tropical leafage. The merchant's mother had been an Andalusian, and perhaps some far-off strain of Moorish blood had constrained her son to build his house on Moorish lines. When Mr. Cass, some twenty years ago, had bought Hollyoaks from the decayed county family who then owned it, the manor-house had been but lately destroyed by fire. The purchaser found a pleasant country, a beautiful park, but no place where he and his family could lay their heads. So he proceeded to erect what the countryside called "Cass's Folly"--a true Moorish dwelling-place such as one finds in Seville and Cordova. A series of low buildings clustered round a central court, or, as it would be called in Spain, a patio. This, in deference to the English climate, had been roofed in with glass and turned into a winter garden. The roof was protected against the elements by a close iron frame-work, which was yet sufficiently open to admit the light. But it is rarely that the sun shines with full strength in the Midlands; so it happened that this garden was usually pervaded by a fascinating twilight.

This large space was filled with tropical foliage; palms rose tall and stately from an undergrowth of oddly-shaped plants with serpentine and hairy foliage interspersed with brilliant flowers. What with the diapered pavement, the white marble pillars of the corridor, and all this tropical fecundity, the spectacle was brilliant and strange to English eyes.

This striking interior, however, made a special appeal to the emotions of a tall, slim young man who was seated in a lounging-chair beside the pool. He had arrived from London only two hours before, after an uncomfortable journey in the cold. He remembered his last Christmas spent at Hollyoaks, when he had arrived much 

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