but they did not surround it, and allowed the farm appurtenances to come close up to it on two sides.  The door which should have been the front door, opening from the largest room in the house, which had been the hall and which was now the kitchen, led directly into the farm-yard.  From the farther end of this farm-yard a magnificent avenue of elms stretched across the home pasture down to a hedge which crossed it at the bottom.  That there had been a road through the rows of trees or, in other words, that there had in truth been an avenue to the house on that side was, of course, certain.  But now there was no vestige of such road, and the front entrance to Plaistow Hall was by a little path across the garden from a modern road which had been made to run cruelly near to the house.  Such was Plaistow Hall, and such was its mistress.  Of the master, the reader, I hope, already knows so much as to need no further description.

As Belton drove himself home from the railway station late on that August night, he made up his mind that he would tell his sister all his story about Clara Amedroz.  She had ever wished that he should marry, and now he had made his attempt.  Little as had been her opportunity of learning the ways of men and women from experience in society, she had always seemed to him to know exactly what every one should do in every position of life.  And she would be tender with him, giving him comfort even if she could not give him hope.  Moreover Mary might be trusted with his secret; for Belton felt, as men always do feel, a great repugnance to have it supposed that his suit to a woman had been rejected.  Women, when they have loved in vain, often almost wish that their misfortune should be known.  They love to talk about their wounds mystically telling their own tales under feigned names, and extracting something of a bitter sweetness out of the sadness of their own romance.  But a man, when he has been rejected rejected with a finality that is acknowledged by himself is unwilling to speak or hear a word upon the subject, and would willingly wash the episode out from his heart if it were possible.

But not on that his first night would he begin to speak of Clara Amedroz.  He would not let his sister believe that his heart was too full of the subject to allow of his thinking of other matters.  Mary was still up, waiting for him when he arrived, with tea, and cream, and fruit ready for him.  ‘Oh, Mary!’ he said, ’why are you not in bed?  You know that I would have come to you upstairs.’  She excused herself, smiling, declaring that she could not deny herself the pleasure of being with him for half an hour on his first return from his travels.  ‘Of course I want to know what they are like,’ she said.

‘He is a nice-looking old man,’ said Will ’and she is a nice-looking young woman.’

‘That is graphic and short, at any rate.’

‘And he is weak and silly, but she is strong and and and’