“Do they work in the fields hereabouts?”

“Oh yes—­at hoeing, weeding and stone-picking, in hay-time and harvest.  Some of them walk from Morte—­four miles here and four back.  There is a widow whose husband died on the home-farm—­it was thought not to answer to let widows remain in the cottages—­this woman had five young children, and when she moved to Morte, Mr. Chiverton kindly kept her on.  I want her to live at our gates.”

“And what does she earn a day?”

“Ninepence.  Of course, she has help from the parish as well—­two shillings a week, I think, and a loaf for each child besides.”

A queer expression flitted over Bessie’s face; she drew a long breath and stretched her arms above her head.

“Yes, I feel it is wrong:  the widow of a laborer who died in Mr. Chiverton’s service, who spends all her available strength in his service herself, ought not to be dependent on parish relief.  I put it to him one day with the query, Why God had given him such great wealth?  A little house, a garden, the keep of a cow, a pig, would have made all the difference in the world to her, and none to him, except that her children might have grown up stout and healthy, instead of ill-nurtured and weakly.  But you are tired.  Let us go and take a few turns in the winter-garden.  It is the perfection of comfort on a windy, cold day like this.”

Bessie acceded with alacrity.  Castlemount was not the building of one generation, but it owed its chief glories to its present master.  Mr. Chiverton had found it a spacious country mansion, and had converted it into a palace of luxury and a museum of art—­one reason why Morte had thriven and Chiver-Chase become almost without inhabitant.  Bessie Fairfax was half bewildered amongst its magnificences, but its winter-garden was to her the greatest wonder of all.  She was not, however, sufficiently acclimatized to an artificial temperature to enjoy it long.  “It is delicious, but as we are not hot-house ferns, a good stretch over that upland would be, perhaps, more delicious still:  it is cold, but the sun shines,” she said after two turns under the moist glass.

“We must not change the air too suddenly,” Mrs. Chiverton objected.  “The wind is very boisterous.”

“There is a woman at work in it; is it your widow?” Bessie asked, pointing down a mimic orange-grove.

“Yes—­poor thing! how miserably she is clothed!  I must send her out one of my knitted kerchiefs.”

“Oh yes, do,” said Bessie; and the woollen garment being brought, she was deputed to carry it to the weeding woman.

On closer view she proved to be a lean, laborious figure, with an anxious, weather-beaten face, which cleared a little as she received the mistress’s gift.  It was a kerchief of thick gray wool, to cross over in front and tie behind.

“It will be a protection against the cold for my chest; I suffered with the inflammation badly last spring,” she said, approving it.