CHAPTERS I AND II. ONE. BUTTONWOOD TERRORS. The letter I had just read was signed Anne Mansfield Van Wick, and the first two names gave my memory such a filip that I sat for a long time, motionless, while my thoughts raced back ten years and reached their goal in a little suburban town. The picture which memory so obligingly showed me in definite detail was that of two young people saying good -bye, somewhat effusively. One of these was an immature version of my present self, and the other was a pigtailed schoolgirl who now signed herself Anne Mansfield Van Wick. At the time of that dramatic parting she had been Anne Mansfield and I, Raymond Sturgis, was leaving her to go to college. Our farewell promises, though made in all good faith, were never fulfilled, and the barrier of circumstances that time raised between us had kept us from sight of each other for ten years. I assumed, when I thought of it at all, that Anne had forgotten me, and though I had not forgotten her I remembered her only casually and at long intervals. I had heard of her marriage to David Van Wick without poignant regret, but with a feeling of resentment that she should throw herself away on a man so old and eccentric though a well -known capitalist. And now, all unexpectedly, I had received an invitation to one of her house parties. It expressed pleasantly enough a desire to renew our old -time acquaintance and asked me to come on Friday for the weekend. The hand writing fashionable and sophisticated, not at all like the sprawling schoolgirl hand of ten years ago. My curiosity was roused to know what Anne would be like as Mrs. Van Wick and I accepted the invitation with a pleased sense of regaining an old friend. As my train swayed swiftly through New England toward the village of Crescent Falls where the Van Wicks had their summer residence I tried to picture to myself the pretty little that I had known as the Châtelaine of a great estate with an elderly husband and two grown up stepchildren. The picture was so incongruous that I gave it up and awaited first impressions with unbiased opinions. And I may well have done so for though I knew of his wealth I knew nothing of the taste and judgment that had led David Van Wick to select for his summer home a most beautiful country estate whose century -old mansion was surrounded by equally old buttonwood trees, a species rapidly growing extinct in New England. The motor car which brought me from the station swung into the broad avenue that led to the house and I marveled that such a home could have been found in America. For it was like an English park. The green lawns rolling off in velvety sweeps toward the distances of woodland which betokened flowery dells and picturesque ravines. No one had met me at