"I will break down her reserve. I think she is lovable and sweet when
once one can force her to throw aside this mask," Helen Everard thought.

So they had come to Starden together.

Joan had said little when she had first looked over the place; but
Helen, watching her, saw a tinge of colour come into her cheeks, and her
breast rise and fall quickly, which proved that Joan was by no means so
unmoved as she would appear.

It was her home, the home of her people. It was to-day almost as it had
been a hundred years ago, and a hundred years before that, and even a
hundred years earlier still.

The low-pitched, old-fashioned rooms, with the mullioned windows, the
deep embrasures, the great open, stone-slabbed hearths, with their
andirons and dog-grates, the walls panelled with carved linen-fold oak,
darkened by age alone and polished to a dull, glossy glow by hands that
would work no more.

Through these rooms, each redolent of the past, each breathing of a
kindly, comfortable home-life, the girl went, looking about her with
eyes that saw everything and yet seemed to see nothing.

"You like it, dear?" Helen asked.

"It is all wonderful, beautiful!" Joan said, and yet she spoke with a
touch of sadness in her voice.... "How--how lonely one might be here!"
she added.