The sun had dipped behind the woods and the long shades were possessing the insolent horsemen one by one. I saw the light die from off the top of a glossy-leaved lance and all the brave hard green turn to soft black. The house, accepting another day at end, as it had accepted an hundred thousand gone, seemed to settle deeper into its rest among the shadows.
“Have you ever wanted to?” she said after the silence.
“Very much sometimes,” I replied. The child had left the window as the shadows closed upon it.
“Ah! So’ve I, but I don’t suppose it’s allowed. … Where d’you live?”
“Quite the other side of the county—sixty miles and more, and I must be going back. I’ve come without my big lamp.”
“But it’s not dark yet. I can feel it.”
“I’m afraid it will be by the time I get home. Could you lend me someone to set me on my road at first? I’ve utterly lost myself.”
“I’ll send Madden with you to the cross-roads. We are so out of the world, I don’t wonder you were lost! I’ll guide you round to the front of the house; but you will go slowly, won’t you, till you’re out of the grounds? It isn’t foolish, do you think?”
“I promise you I’ll go like this,” I said, and let the car start herself down the flagged path.
We skirted the left wing of the house, whose elaborately cast lead guttering alone was worth a day’s journey; passed under a great rose-grown gate in the red wall, and so round to the high front of the house which in beauty and stateliness as much excelled the back as that all others I had seen.