“It is three or four miles off, quite the other way,” said the young man, “but there is a view of it from this. It stands high, and I believe there is a short cut to it across the fields, skirting the town.”
“I see,” said Mrs Derwent consideringly. “Then you have never heard Sir Adam Nigel’s name? Perhaps you are not a native of the place, however.”
“No; I come from Yorkshire,” replied he. “I have only been down here a few months.”
“Ah; that explains it,” the lady said again.
They strolled round the church, and gazed over to where they were told Alderwood should be seen, if it were clearer. But a slight mist was already rising, and there was a mist over the older woman’s eyes too.
“Alderwood was close to my old home, you know,” she whispered to Blanche.
Then they walked round the green and down the short bit of lane separating it from the high-road, the clerk staying behind to tell the flyman to follow them.
“How does it all strike you, Blanchie dear?” said Mrs Derwent, with some anxiety in her tone.
“I like the house very much indeed,” the girl replied. “It might be made very nice. Would all that cost too much, mamma?”
“We must see,” Mrs Derwent replied. “But the place—the green, and all these other new houses. What do you think of the neighbourhood, in short?”