"She? You be meaning Miss Benham o' Beech Hill?"
"I don't know."
"Sure, Mr. Benham be'unt no fool! Marry she! 'Tain't no sense."
"Well, it isn't our business, is it, David?"
The old man grunted. He was thinking of things that it was not his business to utter.
But his words had had their effect on Nance. For days she had been striving against a growing sense of resentment. Doubt and mental suffering have some kinship to physical pain; they torment the mind until it breaks out into passionate rebellion. Nance left David to his scything and went straight into the house. She knew that her father was in his study, and her very doubts drove her to demand some answer to the questions that were troubling her heart. Durrell's secretiveness, De Rothan's mysterious presence about the place, the slandering of Jasper Benham, all these things combined to form a distorting glass that threw the reflections of life back at her with perplexing vagueness.
Nance climbed the stairs slowly, stiffening her courage against this colloquy with her father. The house seemed very still as she passed down the long brown gallery and knocked at her father's door.
"Yes?"
"May I come in, father?"
"Yes, come in."