Langholm had not known one rose from another when he
came to live among this galaxy; now they were his separate, familiar,
individual friends, each with its own character in his eyes, its own
charm for him; and the man's soul was the sweeter for each summer spent
in their midst. But to-night they called to closed nostrils and blind
eyes. And the evening sun, reddening the upper stems of the pines, and
warming the mellow tiles of his dear cottage, had no more to say to
Langholm's spirit than his beloved roses.
The man had emerged from the dreamy, artistic, aesthetic existence into
which he had drifted through living alone amid so much simple beauty; he
was in real, human, haunting trouble, and the manlier man for it
already.
Could he be mistaken after all? No; the more he pondered, the more
convinced he felt. Everything pointed to the same conclusion, beginning
with that first dinner-party at Upthorpe, and that first conversation of
which he remembered every word. Mrs. Steel was Mrs. Minchin--the
notorious Mrs. Minchin--the Mrs. Minchin who had been tried for her
husband's murder, and acquitted to the horror of a righteous world.
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