This and a dozen other matters of interest were being repeated and discussed, the lady at the piano being constantly appealed to for information, or to confirm some surprising statement. During a momentary lull in the talk, she asked her question.
Ruth Jennings answered:
"Oh, the Ansted girls! Why, Miss Benedict, is it possible that you have not discovered that they belong to a higher sphere? Dear me! They have nothing to do with South Plains, except to tolerate it during a few months of the summer because the old homestead is here, and they can't very well move it to the city. They live in that lovely place at the top of Curve Hill. You have been up there, haven't you? It is the only really lovely spot in South Plains. In summer their grounds are just elegant!"
Yes, Miss Benedict had been in that direction, and every other. She rested herself, body and soul, by long, brisk, lonely walks. She had noticed the place and wondered over it, and had meant to ask its history. So unlike every other spot in the withered village. Great broad fields stretching into the distance; handsome iron fence, with massive gate-posts, guarded by fierce-looking dogs in iron; a trellised arbor, the outline of a croquet-ground; a hint of wide-spreading, carefully kept lawns, showing between patches of the snow; a summerhouse that in the season of vines and blossoms must be lovely; a circle that suggested an artificial pond, centred with a fountain, where she could imagine the water playing rainbows with the sunshine in the long summer days.
And in short, there were all about this place very unmistakable tokens of the sort of refinement which is only to be secured by a full purse and an abundance of elegant leisure on the part of some one whose tastes are cultured to the highest degree. Shrouded in the snows of midwinter, with a shut-up look about the large, old-fashioned, roomy house, kept in a state of perfect repair, yet kept carefully for what it was, a country home, the place was marked and exceptional.
It spoke a language that could be found nowhere else, in the village or out of it for miles around. Miss Benedict had looked upon it with loving eyes. It spoke to her of the world from which she had come away; of the sort of life which had always heretofore been hers. It did not look elegant to her, except by contrast with the surrounding shabbiness. She had been used to much greater elegance. It simply said "home" to her sad heart; and only the Saturday before, she had wondered whose home it was, and why she never saw people who seemed to match it, and when it would be opened again for residence, and whether she should ever get a chance to visit that lovely greenhouse, all aglow even now.
It came to her as a surprise that it really was the home of two of her pupils.
"Do you mean that the Ansteds live there?" she questioned. "Where is the family? and why are the girls here?"
"Oh, the family are everywhere. They scatter in the winter like the birds. Go South, you know, or West, or wherever suits their royal fancy. They have no home but this, because they can not make up their minds where to settle down for one, so they board all over the world. Do business in the city, live in South Plains, and stay in Europe; that is about their history."