The old familiar tyranny had begun again.  Her holiday of peace and liberation was interrupted—­perhaps over, for who knew if he would go away, after all, to-morrow?  He might leave the house, driven out of it by Kate Lumley, but that was nothing to prevent his taking rooms in the village and coming up every day.  This tyranny of one person over another!  And she was so miserably constructed that she wouldn’t even be able to frown him down without being misunderstood.

Scrap, who loved this time of the evening in her corner, felt indignant with Mr. Briggs who was doing her out of it, and she turned her back on the garden and him and went towards the house without a look or a word.  But Briggs, when he realized her intention, leapt to his fee, snatched chairs which were not in her way out of it, kicked a footstool which was not in her path on one side, hurried to the door, which stood wide open, in order to hold it open, and followed her through it, walking by her side along the hall.

What was to be done with Mr. Briggs?  Well, it was his hall; she couldn’t prevent his walking along it.

“I hope,” he said, not able while walking to take his eyes off her, so that he knocked against several things he would otherwise have avoided—­the corner of a bookcase, an ancient carved cupboard, the table with the flowers on it, shaking the water over—­“that you are quite comfortable here?  If you’re not I’ll—­I’ll flay them alive.”

His voice vibrated.  What was to be done with Mr. Briggs?  She could of course stay in her room the whole time, say she was ill, not appear at dinner; but again, the tyranny of this . . .

“I’m very comfortable indeed,” said Scrap.

“If I had dreamed you were coming—­” he began.

“It’s a wonderful old place,” said Scrap, doing her utmost to sound detached and forbidding, but with little hope of success.

The kitchen was on this floor, and passing its door, which was open a crack, they were observed by the servants, whose thoughts, communicated to each other by looks, may be roughly reproduced by such rude symbols as Aha and Oho—­symbols which represented and included their appreciation of the inevitable, their foreknowledge of the inevitable, and their complete understanding and approval.

“Are you going upstairs?” asked Briggs, as she paused at the foot of them.

“Yes.”

“Which room do you sit in?  The drawing-room, or the small yellow room?”

“In my own room.”

So then he couldn’t go up with her; so then all he could do was to wait till she came out again.

He longed to ask her which was her own room—­it thrilled him to hear her call any room in his house her own room—­that he might picture her in it.  He longed to know if by any happy chance it was his room, for ever after to be filled with her wonder; but he didn’t dare.  He would find that out later from some one else—­Francesca, anybody.