A Shadowed Love by Fred M. White

There was sunshine on the lake at Stanmere; the old house lay bathed in it. The deer were knee-deep in the bracken, the woods behind the house were one upward sheet of green silence. To view the picture from the road or the lake it would be the last scene chosen for a tragedy or a mystery that darkened so many lives. It was Tennyson's "haunt of ancient peace;" one thought of "moaning doves in immemorial elms," and the "murmur of innumerable bees,"--anything but human passions and human weaknesses.

And such it was a day or two after the strange events played there. The tourist passing by looked and admired, and perchance envied. Goss stood in the gateway bland and benign, the model of what a butler should be, the last man to connect with vulgar crime, and listened respectfully as my lady talked to him. There was a placid, contented look on Lady Stanmere's face, an expression of rest, that had not been there for years.