The guests of Hercules

								


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                         THE GUESTS OF HERCULES

                                BOOKS BY

                       C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON

                    The Golden Silence

                    The Motor Maid

                    Lord Loveland Discovers America

                    Set in Silver

                    The Lightning Conductor

                    The Princess Passes

                    My Friend the Chauffeur

                    Lady Betty Across the Water

                    Rosemary in Search of a Father

                    The Princess Virginia

                    The Car of Destiny

                    The Chaperon

The

                           Guests of Hercules

                                   BY

                       C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON

                             ILLUSTRATED BY

                 M. LEONE BRACKER & ARTHUR H. BUCKLAND

                       GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK

                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

                                  1912

                          Copyright, 1912, by

                        C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON



                 All rights reserved, including that of

                  translation into Foreign Languages,

                       including the Scandinavian

                                   TO

                         THE LORD OF THE GARDEN

                             ILLUSTRATIONS

"Mary was a goddess on a golden pinnacle. This was life;
the wine of life"  .     .     .     .     .     .     .    Frontispiece
Mary Grant   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .  FACING PAGE 22
"'I can't promise!' she exclaimed. 'I've never wanted to marry.'"  . 286
"'It was Fate brought you--to give you to me. Do you regret it?'"  . 398

I
THE GUESTS OF HERCULES

Long shadows of late afternoon lay straight and thin across the garden
path; shadows of beech trees that ranged themselves in an undeviating
line, like an inner wall within the convent wall of brick; and the
soaring trees were very old, as old perhaps as the convent itself, whose
stone had the same soft tints of faded red and brown as the autumn
leaves which sparsely jewelled the beeches' silver.
A tall girl in the habit of a novice walked the path alone, moving
slowly across the stripes of sunlight and shadow which inlaid the gravel
with equal bars of black and reddish gold. There was a smell of autumn
on the windless air, bitter yet sweet; the scent of dying leaves, and
fading flowers loth to perish, of rose-berries that had usurped the
place of roses, of chrysanthemums chilled by frost, of moist earth
deprived of sun, and of the green moss-like film overgrowing all the