CHAPTER X. TROUBLE AT WINDLES
Mr. Rufus Bennett stood at the window of the drawing-room of Windles, looking out. From where he stood he could see all those natural and artificial charms which had made the place so desirable to him when he first beheld them. Immediately below, flower beds, bright with assorted blooms, pressed against the ivied stone wall of the house. Beyond, separated from these by a gravel pathway, a smooth lawn, whose green and silky turf rivalled the lawns of Oxford colleges, stretched to a picturesque shrubbery, not so dense as to withhold altogether from the eye of the observer an occasional silvery glimpse of the lake that lay behind it. To the left, through noble trees, appeared a white suggestion of old stable yards; while to the right, bordering on the drive as
