The walls were nearly hidden by white-lettered deed-boxes, pedestals of standard letter-files, a tremendous nest of card-index drawers, and a bookcase containing four or five hundreds works of reference: law-books, encyclopædias, directories, gazetteers, registers and official reports. Flush with the face of the wall that divided this office from the room through which he had just passed was the door of what was, no doubt, an enormous safe. The centre of the room was occupied by an extensive solid oak table, at which, seated with her back to him, Eleanor was engaged with a typewriter.
She did not turn round as he came in, and said, without stopping her work or looking up, "Shut both doors behind you, and sit down over there. I shan't be very long."
So she was expecting him, was his thought as he followed her instructions, and she was not presumably altogether displeased with him for coming. He sat down on the seat of one of those oriel windows that were the most pleasing feature of Hartling's south elevation. He did not, however, turn his attention to the panorama of the gardens that stretched out below him, nor to the glimpses of the rolling Sussex country visible as an effect of blue mysterious freedoms beyond the wardenship of that stiff, enclosing wall. He had no eyes, no thought for anything but Eleanor.
From here, he could watch her earnest, intent profile, bent a little forward over the typewriter. She looked, he thought a trifle flushed, and something in her intense concentration on her work gave her the air of being faintly embarrassed, an air that was not less marked when she whirled the letter off the roller and having glanced at it said in a formal voice, "This is our office, the heart of the house. Don't you think it looks very orderly and business-like?"
He agreed without enthusiasm. His mind was still obsessed with the idea that they were again going out together to the hill that had the view of the South Downs. He felt no inclination just then to discuss the business affairs of old Kenyon.
"This is the mainspring of the whole machine," Eleanor went on, looking at the range of deed boxes in front of her; "and I don't think there is the least fear of the machine breaking down. We are very methodical and very safe. We never gamble. We don't pretend to be far-sighted or ingenious, we're just plodders, adding a few thousands to our capital every year. Do you know that there are securities in this room worth well over half a million? I can't give you exact figures because there are one or two secrets into which the private secretary is not admitted. But I do know that even after we've paid the enormous sums demanded from us in taxes, our income considerably exceeds our disbursements." She looked round at him as she added, "Aren't you dazzled? Don't you feel exalted by being in the presence of all this wealth?"
He was puzzled, uncertain of her mood. Her speech had had a strong flavour of irony, but there was no trace of it in her manner. "Oh! confound the beastly money," he said, "I came up to see if we were going for another walk."
"Not to-day," she said. "I have far too much to do. Perhaps this letter I've just written will explain why."
She held it out towards him, and he jumped up and took it from her and then read it, leaning against the edge of the table.