Stafford smiled.

“That’s all right, Mr. Groves,” he said.  “I can quite understand Mr. Heron thinking it confounded cheek of a stranger to come here and stick up a great white place which no one can fail to see five miles off.  I suppose you think if I were to present myself at the Hall, I should get a very cold reception, eh?”

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t get any reception at all, sir,” replied Groves, with respectful candour.  “I am afraid neither Mr. Heron nor Miss Ida would see you.  The old butler would just say:  ‘Not at home,’ as he says to the county people when they try and call there, especially if they knew who you were, sir.  If I remember rightly, the part of the land Sir Stephen bought belonged to the Herons.”

“I see,” said Stafford.  “It strikes me it is rather a sad story, Mr. Groves; it’s a case of the children paying for the sins of their fathers.”

“That’s it, sir,” assented the landlord.  “It takes ages to build up a house and a family like the Herons; but one man can knock it down, so to speak.  It’s hard lines for Miss Ida, who is as well-born as any of the titled people in the county, and far better than most.  They say that she’s been wonderful well educated, too; though, of course, she hasn’t seen anything of the world, having come straight from some small place in foreign parts to be shut up in the dale.  And it’s quite out of the world here, sir, especially in the winter when the snow lies so thick that we’re almost imprisoned.  But wet or fine, hot or cold, Miss Ida can always be seen riding or driving or walking; she’s a regular Westmoreland lass for that; no weather frights her.”

At this juncture Howard sauntered out of the sitting-room, and he and Stafford went to the open door and looked out on the exquisite view which was now bathed in the soft light of a newly risen moon.

“It still has a smack of Drury Lane, hasn’t it?” said Howard.  “Strange that whenever we see anything beautiful in the way of a landscape we at once compare it with a stage ‘set.’  The fact of it is, my dear Stafford, we have become absolutely artificial; we pretend to admire Nature, but we are thinking of a theatre all the time; we throw up our eyes ecstatically when we hear a nightingale, but we much prefer a comic singer at the Tivoli.  We talk sentiment, at feast, some of us, but we have ceased to feel it; we don’t really know what it means.  I believe some of the minor poets still write about what they call Love, but in my private opinion the thing itself has become instinct.  Who knows anything about it?  Take yourself, for instance; you’ve never been in love, you’ve everything that you can desire, you’re clad in purple and fine linen, you fare sumptuously every day, you flirt six days in the week, and rest not on the seventh—­but love!  You don’t know what it means; and if you do, you’re far too wise in your generation to go in for such an uncomfortable emotion.”