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Transcriber's note:

      The oe-ligature is represented by [oe].





A HOUSE-PARTY

Don Gesualdo

and

A Rainy June

by

OUIDA

Author Of "Othmar," "Princess Napeaxine," "Under Two Flags," "Wanda,"
Etc., Etc.







Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott Company.
1902.




A HOUSE-PARTY.




CHAPTER I.


It is an August morning. It is an old English manor-house. There is a
breakfast-room hung with old gilded leather of the times of the Stuarts;
it has oak furniture of the same period; it has leaded lattices with
stained glass in some of their frames, and the motto of the house in old
French, "J'ay bon vouloir," emblazoned there with the crest of a heron
resting in a crown. Thence, windows open on to a green, quaint, lovely
garden, which was laid out by Monsieur Beaumont when he planned the
gardens of Hampton Court. There are clipped yew-tree walks and arbors
and fantastic forms; there are stone terraces and steps like those of
Haddon, and there are peacocks which pace and perch upon them; there are
