June sunlight lay on the weed-grown lawn. Turrets and balconies showed in uncertain glimpses through layer on layer of overlapping lilac fringes. A breath of sweetness, which would have been imperceptible but for the million of calyxes exhaling it, enveloped the old house as faintly but pervasively as the colour of the wistaria flowers. As he stood there other perfumes stole to him: the purple burden of lilacs, the warm drip of white laburnums, and that haunting syringa smell which was like the noise of bees on a thundery day. On the fluctuations of the breeze they came now from one corner, now another, of the deserted shrubberies, waylaying Vance with their loveliness. But inside the house was that magical room, and all the shadowy power of the past.

He had not been near the Willows since the day when the late Mr. Lorburn had accused him of stealing the books. The place lay on the farther side of Paul's Landing, and his daily tramp to and from Mrs. Tracy's took him nowhere near it. He had been forbidden to return there, and if he disobeyed it might cost his mother-in-law her job. Yet there were days when he could hardly trust himself not to scramble over the gate and try for a loose shutter or a broken latch. Those unused books, row on row in the darkness, drew him unbearably; so he walked in other directions.

Mrs. Tracy, some days earlier, had been seized with inflammatory rheumatism. Laura Lou had to wait on her and do the cooking and washing; besides, she had never got back her strength since her illness, and it would have been imprudent to expose her to the cold of an uninhabited house. For two weeks the Willows remained unvisited; and the thought was misery to Mrs. Tracy, who was sure another caretaker would supersede her. Laura Lou said: "Mother, it's too silly not to send Vanny," and Vance added jocosely: "Even if I had stolen those books, it would be too risky trying it on again." Mrs. Tracy, turning her face from him, said: "The keys are under the pincushion in the upper right-hand drawer… ." And there he stood.

Laura Lou had charged him not to forget what he was there for. He was to open windows and shutters, air the rooms thoroughly, and make sure that no harm had come to the house since Mrs. Tracy's last visit. The two women prudently refrained from laying other duties on him: for the present the house must go undusted. "Just you tell him to take a good look round, so't that hired man'll see somebody's got his eye on him, and then come straight back here," was Mrs. Tracy's injunction to her daughter; who interpreted it: "Darling, all you got to do is to walk round, and tell her everything's all right."