"I am afraid that's the truth."
"You must come in here. I'll wake David somehow. He can go over to Rush Heath as soon as it is light, and tell them to send a cart."
"What a friend you are."
She stood there in sudden forceful contrast to all the things feminine that he had ever known. There was a sweet and brave directness about her that challenged his manhood. Simple, chivalrous homage; some women win such service with a word or a look. He bowed to her, and his heart bowed with his body.
"You are very good to me."
"Good! What else could one do!"
Everything about the grey, upland house seemed fashioned out of stone. The paths and yard were paved with rough stones from the quarry; the hall and passages floored with flagstones. Jasper Benham found himself lying on a long couch under the window in a room that might have been part of an old religious house. It was walled and vaulted with stone, and the fireplace was a great yawning recess with carved pillars on each side of it.
Nance Durrell had gone to wake David Barfoot, the servant, who slept in a room by the stable. Benham lay back with his head on the round squab, and looked about him with the consenting curiosity of a man who dreams. Who were the Durrells, and how had they come to Stonehanger, this grey house, that for thirty years had been spoken of as a house of horror? Benham was not an imaginative man, but this grey room with the huge yawn of its fireplace filled him with a vague sense of eeriness and mystery.
He heard footsteps crossing the paved hall. Nance reappeared with an armful of wood. Her big, brown eyes ran over with laughter, the mischievous and sparkling laughter of perfect health.
"I have managed to wake David. We make him leave his window open, because there is only one way of waking him."