short, straight garden-path; originally even ante-Tudor, but matured
through centuries, with a Queen Anne front of mellow red brick, and
back premises of tile, oak, and modern rough-cast, with old
brew-houses that almost enclosed a graveled court behind. Behind this
again lay a great kitchen garden with box-lined paths dividing it all
into a dozen rectangles, separated from the orchard and yew walk by a
broad double hedge down the center of which ran a sheltered path.
Round the south of the house and in the narrow strip westwards lay
broad lawns surrounded by high trees completely shading it from all
view of the houses that formed the tiny hamlet fifty yards away.

Within, the house had been modernized almost to a commonplace level. A
little hall gave entrance to the drawing-room on the right where these
two women now sat, a large, stately room, paneled from floor to
ceiling, and to the dining-room on the left; and, again, through to
the back, where a smoking room, an inner hall, and the big kitchens
and back premises concluded the ground floor. The two more stories
above consisted, on the first floor, of a row of large rooms, airy,
high, and dignified, and in the attics of a series of low-pitched
chambers, whitewashed, oak-floored, and dormer-windowed, where one or
two of the servants slept in splendid isolation. A little flight of
irregular steps leading out of the big room on to the first floor,
where the housekeeper lived in state, gave access to the further rooms
near the kitchen and sculleries.

Maggie had fallen in love with the place from the instant that she had
entered it. She had been warned in her French convent of the giddy
gaieties of the world and its temptations; and yet it seemed to her
after a week in her new home that the world was very much maligned.
There was here a sense of peace and sheltered security that she had