They walked up and down a number of small twisting passages, broken with steps and wanting light. Rooms led inconveniently out of one another—windows were high under the ceiling or plumb with the floor. There was a great deal of what was really good and lovely—old timber-work, old cupboards, a fine dresser, a gate-legged table and a couple of tallboys—and a great deal that recalled the best parlour, the iron bedsteads, marble-topped washstands, flower-painted mirrors and garlanded wall-paper of the new rural tradition. All, however, was good of its kind, comfortable and in sound repair. Mrs. Godfrey was proud of it all equally.
“But I suppose, Miss Alard, you don’t find it much of a house compared to your own.”
“I think it’s lovely,” said Jenny—“much more exciting than Conster.”
Mrs. Godfrey was not sure whether a house had any right to be exciting, so she made no reply. They went downstairs again, and fearing the best parlour, Jenny suggested that they should go out into the yard and find the men.
“They must have finished their business by now.”
“They’ll be in Ben’s office—leastways in what he calls his office,” said Mrs. Godfrey with a small tolerant laugh.
She led the way into one of the barns where a corner was boarded off into a little room. Here stood a second-hand roll-topped desk and a really good yew-backed chair. The walls were covered with scale-maps of the district and advertisements for cattle food, very much after the style of the office at Starvecrow. Jenny looked round for some individual mark of Ben, but saw none, unless the straightness and order of it all were an index to his character.
“He’ll be showing Mr. Alard the stock—he’s proud of his stock,” said Mrs. Godfrey, and sure enough the next minute they heard voices in the yard, and saw Godfrey and Peter coming out of the cow-shed.
“Here you are,” cried Peter to his sister—“I want you to look at Mr. Godfrey’s Sussex cattle. He’s got the finest I’ve seen in the district.”
Jenny could not speak for a moment. She had seen a look in Godfrey’s eyes when they fell on her that deprived her of speech. Her heart was violently turned to the man from his surroundings in which she had sought a refuge for her self-respect—Fourhouses, its beauties and its uglinesses, became dim, and she saw only what she had seen at first and been ashamed of—the man whom she could—whom she must—love.