A DECISION


Overfield Court lay basking in warm June sunshine. The western side of
the great house with its new timber and plaster faced the evening sun
across the square lawns and high terrace; and the woods a couple of
hundred yards away cast long shadows over the gardens that lay beyond
the moat. The lawns, in their broad plateaux on the eastern side
descended by steps, in cool shadow to the lake that formed a
quarter-circle below the south-eastern angle of the house; and the
mirrored trees and reeds on the other side were broken, circle after
circle, by the great trout that were rising for their evening meal. The
tall front of the house on the north, formed by the hall in the centre
with the kitchen at its eastern end and the master's chamber on the
western, was faced by a square-towered gatehouse through which the
straight drive leading into the main road approached the house under a
lime-avenue; and on the south side the ground fell away again rapidly
below the chapel and the morning-room, in copse and garden and wild
meadow bright with buttercups and ox-eye daisies, down to the lake again
and the moat that ran out of it round the entire domain.

The cobbled courtyard in the centre of the house, where the tall leaded
pump stood, was full of movement. Half a dozen trunks lay there that
had just been carried in from the luggage-horses that were now being led
away with patient hanging heads towards the stables that stood outside
the gatehouse on the right, and three or four dusty men in livery were
talking to the house-servants who had come out of their quarters on the
left. From the kitchen corner came a clamour of tongues and dishes, and
smoke was rising steadily from the huge outside chimney that rose beyond
the roofs.