It was a pleasant voice,--Mrs. Peyton's. He glanced back at the gateway;
it was empty. He looked quickly to the right and left; no one was there.
The voice spoke again with the musical addition of a laugh; it seemed
to come from the passion vine. Ah, yes; behind it, and half overgrown
by its branches, was a long, narrow embrasured opening in the wall,
defended by the usual Spanish grating, and still further back, as in the
frame of a picture, the half length figure of Mrs. Peyton, very handsome
and striking, too, with a painted picturesqueness from the effect of the
checkered light and shade.
"You looked so tired and bored out there," she said. "I am afraid you
are finding it very dull at the rancho. The prospect is certainly not
very enlivening from where you stand."
Clarence protested with a visible pleasure in his eyes, as he held back
a spray before the opening.
"If you are not afraid of being worse bored, come in here and talk
with me. You have never seen this part of the house, I think,--my own
sitting-room. You reach it from the hall in the gallery. But Lola or
Anita will show you the way."
He reentered the gateway, and quickly found the hall,--a narrow, arched
passage, whose black, tunnel-like shadows were absolutely unaffected
by the vivid, colorless glare of the courtyard without, seen through an
opening at the end. The contrast was sharp, blinding, and distinct;
even the edges of the opening were black; the outer light halted on
the threshold and never penetrated within.
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