presence, of a mind slowly ripened on a sunny wall of experience.
She had never before had so deep a sense of her intimacy with it,
such a conviction that its secrets were all beneficent, kept, as
they said to children, "for one's good," so complete a trust in
its power to gather up her life and Ned's into the harmonious
pattern of the long, long story it sat there weaving in the sun.

She heard steps behind her, and turned, expecting to see the
gardener, accompanied by the engineer from Dorchester. But only
one figure was in sight, that of a youngish, slightly built man,
who, for reasons she could not on the spot have specified, did
not remotely resemble her preconceived notion of an authority on
hot-house boilers. The new-comer, on seeing her, lifted his hat,
and paused with the air of a gentleman--perhaps a traveler--
desirous of having it immediately known that his intrusion is
involuntary. The local fame of Lyng occasionally attracted the
more intelligent sight-seer, and Mary half-expected to see the
stranger dissemble a camera, or justify his presence by producing
it. But he made no gesture of any sort, and after a moment she
asked, in a tone responding to the courteous deprecation of his
attitude: "Is there any one you wish to see?"

"I came to see Mr. Boyne," he replied. His intonation, rather
than his accent, was faintly American, and Mary, at the familiar
note, looked at him more closely. The brim of his soft felt hat
cast a shade on his face, which, thus obscured, wore to her
short-sighted gaze a look of seriousness, as of a person arriving
"on business," and civilly but firmly aware of his rights.

Past experience had made Mary equally sensible to such claims;