“If I were Lady Mary,” she said, “I would have slammed the old front door behind me the very day after Sir Timothy was buried—­and gone away; I would.  There she is, like a prisoner, with the old ladies counting every tear she sheds, and adding them up to see if it is enough; and measuring every inch of crape on her gowns; and finding fault with all she does, just as they used when Sir Timothy was alive to back them up.  And she is afraid to do anything he didn’t like; and she never listens to the doctor, the only person in the world who’s ever had the courage to fight her battles.”

“The doctor,” said John, sharply.  “Has she been ill?”

“No, no.”

“What has he to do with Lady Mary?” said John.

His displeasure was so great that the colour rose in his clean-shaven face, and did not escape little Sarah’s observation, for all her downcast lashes.

“Somebody must go and see her,” said Sarah; “and you were away.  And the canon is just nobody, always bothering her for subscriptions; though he is very fond of her, like everybody else,” she added, with compunction.  “Dear me, Mr. Crewys, how fast you are walking!”

John had unconsciously quickened his pace so much that she had some ado to keep up with him without actually running.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

“It is so hot, and the hill is steep, and I am rather fat.  I dare say I shall fine down as I get older,” said Sarah, apologetically.  “It would be dreadful if I grew up like mamma.  But I am more like my father, thank goodness, and he is simply a mass of hard muscle.  I dare say even I could beat you on the flat.  But not up this drive.  Doesn’t it look pretty in the spring?”

“It was very different when I left Barracombe,” said John.

He looked round with all a Londoner’s appreciation.

In the sunny corner next the ivy-clad lodge an early rhododendron had burst into scarlet bloom.  The steep drive was warmly walled and sheltered on the side next the hill by horse-chestnuts, witch-elms, tall, flowering shrubs and evergreens, and a variety of tree-azaleas and rhododendrons which promised a blaze of beauty later in the season.

But the other side of the drive lay in full view of the open landscape; rolling grass slopes stretching down to the orchards and the valley.  Violets, white and blue, scented the air, and the primroses clustered at the roots of the forest trees.

The gnarled and twisted stems of giant creepers testified to the age of Barracombe House.  Before the entrance was a level space, which made a little spring garden, more formal and less varied in its arrangement than the terrace gardens on the south front; but no less gay and bright, with beds of hyacinths, red and white and purple, and daffodils springing amidst their bodyguards of pale, pointed spears.

A wild cherry-tree at the corner of the house had showered snowy petals before the latticed window of the study; the window whence Sir Timothy had taken his last look at the western sky, and from which his watchful gaze had once commanded the approach to his house, and observed almost every human being who ventured up the drive.