Moreover his new home began to have a very potent charm for him. His mother had settled in a small ancient house in the depths of the country. They had very few neighbours. The little building itself was full of charm, the charm of mellow beauty and old human ownership; it was embosomed among trees, and had a small walled garden, rich in flowers and shade. He had been there but a few weeks, when he realised that the old feeling of a vague friendliness and intimate concern with nature had come back. It was as though the spirits, which had peopled the remembered flowers and trees of his first home, had flitted with them, and had taken up their abode in this other garden. The flowers seemed to smile at him with the same shy mystery, the trees to surround the house like a troop of loyal sentinels. The absence of the constant social interruptions that had been characteristic of the Rectory was an added charm; his mother and sister, too, though heavily overshadowed by grief, found the place peaceful and congenial; and the best joy of all was the sweet and fragrant relation that sprung up among the three. They were like the survivors of a wreck, whose former familiarity had been converted suddenly into a deep and emotional loyalty, by the sad experiences through which they had passed together. The relations had before been affectionate, but in some ways superficial. Hugh to his surprise found himself daily making discoveries about his mother and sister, through the close relationship into which they were brought. Unsuspected tastes and feelings revealed themselves, and he began to be aware of a whole host of new interests that sprang up between them. Sometimes, when a hedgerow is rooted up, one may notice how a whole crop of unknown flowers, whose seeds had been buried deep in the soil, suddenly emerge to conceal the bare scarred ditch. Hugh thought to himself that the experiences through which they had passed had had this effect of enlarging and extending sympathies which were there all the time, and which had never had an opportunity of revealing themselves. And thus, out of sorrow and wretchedness, there sprang to light a whole range of new forces, a vision of new possibilities. It seemed to Hugh that he was like a man who had passed by night through an unfamiliar country, by unknown roads; that as the darkness had begun to glimmer to dawn, the shapeless shadows of things about him had gradually taken shape, and revealed themselves at last to be but the quiet trees with their gentle tapestry of leaves, leaning over his way; and what had been but a formless horror, became revealed as a company of friendly living things that beckoned comfortably to his spirit, and grew into purer colour as the dawn began to break from underground. XIX Women--The Feminine View--Society--Frank Relations--Coldness--Sensitiveness