His trained eye could detect no unevenness; the smooth surface might have been laid with a spirit level.

Festing had seen no grass like this in Canada and wondered how much labor it cost.
Then he came to the end of the shrubs and saw a small, creeper-covered house, with a low wall, pierced where shallow steps went up, along the terrace.

The creeper was in full leaf and dark, but roses bloomed about the windows and bright-red geraniums in urns grew upon the wall.

He heard bees humming and a faint wind in the beech tops, but the shadows scarcely moved upon the grass, and a strange, drowsy quietness brooded over the place.

Indeed, the calm was daunting; he felt he belonged to another world and was intruding there, but went resolutely up the shallow steps.
Two white-haired ladies received him in a shady, old-fashioned room with a low ceiling.