Thus Stella Ballantyne crept away from Bombay and in five weeks’ time she landed at Southampton.  There she resumed her name.  She travelled into Sussex and stayed for a few nights at the inn whither Henry Thresk had come years before on his momentous holiday.  She had a little money—­the trifling income which her parents had left to her upon their death—­and she began to look about for a house.  By a piece of good fortune she discovered that the cottage in which she had lived at Little Beeding would be empty in a few months.  She took it and before the summer was out she was once more established there.  It was on an afternoon of August when Stella made her home in it again.  She passed along the yellow lane driven deep between high banks of earth where the roots of great elm-trees cropped out.  Every step was familiar to her.  The lane with many twists under overarching branches ran down a steep hill and came out into the open by the big house with its pillared portico and its light grey stone and its wonderful garden of lawn and flowers and cedars.  A tiny church with a narrow graveyard and strange carefully-trimmed square bushes of yew stood next to the house, and beyond the church the lane dipped to the river and the cottage.

Stella went from room to room.  She had furnished the cottage simply and daintily; the walls were bright, her servant-girl had gathered flowers and set them about.  Outside the window the sunlight shone on a green garden.  She was alone.  It was the home-coming she had wished for.

For three or four months she was left alone; and then one afternoon as she came into the cottage after a walk she found a little white card upon the table.  It bore the name of Mr. Hazlewood.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HAZLEWOODS

In the quiet country town obvious changes had taken place during the eight years of Stella’s absence.  They were not changes of importance, however, and one sentence can symbolize them all—­there was now tarmac upon its roads.  But in the cluster of houses a mile away at the end of the deep lane the case was different.  Mr. Harold Hazlewood had come to Little Beeding.  He now lived in the big house to which the village owed its name and indeed its existence.  He lived—­and spread consternation amongst the gentry for miles round.

“Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn’t died!” old John Chubble used to cry.  He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple.  “There was a man.  But this fellow!  And to think he’s got that beautiful house!  Do you know there’s hardly a pheasant on the place.  And I’ve hashed them down out of the sky in the old days there by the dozen.  Well, he’s got a son in the Coldstream, Dick Hazlewood, who’s not so bad.  But Harold!  Oh, pass me the port!”