double window opened straight into an irregular garden which merged
insensibly into a sloping lawn bounded by a river-pool. The bank on the
other side of the stream rose sharply and was well wooded. Above the
crest showed the thatched roofs or red tiles of Steynholme, which was a
village in the time of William the Conqueror, and has remained a village
ever since. Frame this picture in flowering shrubs, evergreens, a few
choice firs, a copper beech, and some sturdy oaks shadowing the lawn, and
the prospect on a June morning might well have led out into the open any
young man with a pipe.

But John Menzies Grant seemed to have no eye for a scene that would have
delighted a painter. He turned to the light, scrutinized so closely a
strip of turf which ran close to the wall that he might have been
searching for a lost diamond, and then peered through the lowermost
left-hand pane of the small window into the room he had just quitted.

The result of this peeping was remarkable in more ways than one.

A stout, elderly, red-faced woman, who had entered the room soon after
she heard Grant's chair being moved, caught sight of the intent face. She
screamed loudly, and dropped a cup and saucer with a clatter on to a
Japanese tray.

Grant hurried back to the French window. In his haste he did not notice a
long shoot of a Dorothy Perkins rose which trailed across his path, and
it struck him smartly on the cheek.

"I'm afraid I startled you, Mrs. Bates," he said, smiling so pleasantly
that no woman or child could fail to put trust in him.