“Oh!” she sighed, “Oh!”
Her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before.
“Some of it,” he said, “was here before the Conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstans then.”
“And only one of them is left,” she cried, “and it is like this!”
“They have been a bad lot, the last hundred years,” was the surly liberty of speech he took, “a bad lot.”
It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpoel to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence.
Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length Bettina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go.
“I am very much obliged to you,” she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more, he was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has work to do can justly spend his time in one's service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man, with his not too courteous, surly face. She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small, latched bag at her belt.
“I am very much obliged, keeper,” she said. “You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful—and so sad. Thank you—thank you.” And she put a goldpiece in his palm.
His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know—because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness.