Mrs. Werner was at Dassell with her children, The old lord was dead, and that Charley, who had once wished to marry his cousin, proposed taking up his residence at the family seat. If this resolution were carried out, Mrs. Trebasson intended to leave the hall, notwithstanding her nephew's cordially expressed hope that she would still consider it her home.
Naturally, therefore, Mrs. Werner availed herself of the opportunity, still left of paying a long visit to the old place, and Mr. Werner had begged her not to hurry back, as "he could do very well without her"—which utterance he did not intend to be ungracious, neither did his wife so understand it.
As for Mortomley and his wife, they were far away from London.
In one of the most remote parts of Hertfordshire where woods cover the lonely country for miles, where the silvery Lea flows through green fields on its way to the sea, never dreaming of the horror and filth it will have to encounter ere mingling with the Thames—where the dells are in the sweet spring time carpeted with violets, blue and white, that load the air with perfume—where rabbits scud away through copses starred with primroses—where jays plume their brilliant feathers in the golden sunshine—where squirrels look with bright curious eyes at the solitary passer-by—where pheasants scarcely move out of the way of a stranger's footsteps—where, save for the singing of birds, and the humming of insects, and the bleating of sheep, there is a silence that can be felt—Dolly had found a home.
As seen from the road as picturesque a cottage as painter need have desired to see, but only a poor scrap of a cottage architecturally considered—a labourer's cottage originally, and yet truly as Dolly described it to Mrs. Werner—a very pretty little place.
The ground on which it stood rose suddenly from the road, and the tiny garden in front sloped down to the highway at a sharp angle. On one side was a large orchard, which went with the house, and on the other a great field of growing wheat already turning colour.
Behind the cottage was first its own ample vegetable garden, and then one of the woods I have mentioned, which formed a background for the red-tiled roof and tumbledown chimneys of the Mortomleys' new home.
Dolly had seen the advertisement of a place she thought might suit to let in this locality, and so chanced to penetrate into wilds so far from London.
As usual, the place advertised was in every respect undesirable, and Dolly wore herself out wandering about interminable lanes looking for a vacant cottage and finding none.
All this was in the early spring when the leaves were only putting forth, when Daffodils, Mezerion, and American currant alone decked the modest flower-gardens—when nature, in a word, had not yet decked herself in the beautiful garments of May, or in the glorious apparel of the year's maturer age.