The Skeleton Key by Bernard Capes

Sir Francis Orsden and the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now for some days, and the primroses under the wall were already putting forth a little precocious blossom or two, feeling for the Spring. There was a balm in the air and a softness in the soil which communicated themselves to the human fibre, reawakening it as it were to a sense of new life out of old distress. Such feelings men might have who have landed from perilous seas upon a smiling shore.

The two talked earnestly as they strolled, on a subject necessarily the most prominent in their minds. Said Le Sage: