“Is the family at home?” she inquired.

“There is no family but—­his lordship.  He is off the place.”

“Does he object to trespassers?”

“Not if they are respectable and take no liberties.”

“I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties,” said Miss Vanderpoel, with a touch of hauteur.  The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing.  Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class.  A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and her slight distaste for his manner arose from the realisation that a gentleman’s servant who did not address his superiors as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way.  In his place she knew her own demeanour would have been finished.

“If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house,” she said.  “If you show them to me, shall I be interfering with your duties?”

“No,” he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, “miss.”

“I am interested,” she said, as they crossed the grass together, “because places like this are quite new to me.  I have never been in England before.”

“There are not many places like this,” he answered, “not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin.  Even Stornham is not quite as far gone.”

“It is far gone,” said Miss Vanderpoel.  “I am staying there—­with my sister, Lady Anstruthers.”

“Beg pardon—­miss,” he said.  This time he touched his cap in apology.

Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was in a sense glad to see her again.  Why he was glad he did not profess to know or even to ask himself.  Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chanced to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than girlhood.  Also, since the night they had come together on the ship’s deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented.  He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge.

“I will show you this first,” he explained.  “Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them.”

Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lowered glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees.  The light was mellow golden-green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her.  In a few minutes he stopped.