For these reasons, although Mr. Juxon’s arrival and instalment in the Hall were regarded with satisfaction by the little circle at Billingsfield, while he himself was at once received into intimacy and treated with cordial friendliness, he nevertheless represented in the minds of all an unsolved enigma.  And to the squire the existence of one of the circle was at least as problematical as his own life could seem to any of them.  The more he saw of Mrs. Goddard, the more he wondered at her and speculated about her and the less he dared to ask her any questions.  But he understood from Mr. Ambrose’s manner, that the vicar at least was in possession of her secret, and he inferred from what he was able to judge about the vicar’s character that the latter was not a man to extend his friendship to any one who did not deserve it.  Whatever Mrs. Goddard’s story was, he felt sure that her troubles had not been caused by her own misconduct.  She was in every respect what he called a good woman.  Of course, too, she was a widow; the way in which she spoke of her husband implied that, on those rare occasions when she spoke of him at all.  Charles James Juxon was a gentleman, whatever course of life he had followed before settling in the country, and he did not feel that he should be justified in asking questions about Mrs. Goddard of the vicar.  Besides, as time went on and he found his own interest in her increasing, he began to nourish the hope that he might one day hear her story from her own lips.  In his simplicity it did not strike him that he himself had grown to be an object of interest to her.

Somehow, during the summer and autumn of that year, Mrs. Goddard contracted a habit of watching the park gate from the window of the cottage, particularly at certain hours of the day.  It was only a habit, but it seemed to amuse her.  She used to sit in the small bay window with her books, reading to herself or teaching Nellie, and it was quite natural that from time to time she should look out across the road.  But it rarely happened, when she was installed in that particular place, that Mr. Juxon failed to appear at the gate, with his dog Stamboul, his green stockings, his stick and the inevitable rose in his coat.  Moreover he generally crossed the road and, if he did not enter the cottage and spend a quarter of an hour in conversation, he at least spoke to Mrs. Goddard through the open window.  It was remarkable, too, that as time went on what at first had seemed the result of chance, recurred with such invariable regularity as to betray the existence of a fixed rule.  Nellie, too, who was an observant child, had ceased asking questions but watched her mother with her great violet eyes in a way that made Mrs. Goddard nervous.  Nellie liked the squire very much but though she asked her mother very often at first whether she, too, was fond of that nice Mr. Juxon, the answers she received were not encouraging.  How was it possible, Mrs. Goddard asked, to speak of liking anybody one had known