It was early in the morning when Bess, who had asked her way of a laborer trimming the hedges by the road, came down from the high lands and saw Rodenham village with its red-and-white walls and thatched roofs in the valley. The smoke ascended from the chimneys in purple threads towards the blue, and a haze of gold hung over the woods and meadows, dimming the grand outlines of the distant downs. Bess saw the priory standing apart from the village amid the green billows of its park and the shadows of its mighty trees. The place looked very solemn and stately in the morning light, and almost forbidding to her in the autocracy of its solitude. She felt much like a beggar-woman as she slipped through the lodge gates and passed under the yews that stood there in massive and shadowy repose. Iron gates swinging on stone pillars, each topped with a carved dragon, opened upon the terrace and garden. Bess pushed in and passed on bravely towards the Tudor porch, with its massive timbers, and roses and acorns carved in oak. Each tall window of the house seemed to stare at her superciliously, and the peacocks strutting on the terrace in the sun were like so many gaudy lackeys ruffling it about her. She climbed the three steps, and laid her hand on the iron bell-pull with a fluttering feeling at the heart. How the rusty thing creaked and resisted her! Then the rod slid so vigorously in its rusty sockets that the loud and insistent clangor of the bell made Bess fancy that the whole house was startled by her boldness. An elderly woman in a mob-cap, her hair in curl papers, opened the door to Bess. The servants had fled the house, and Peter Gladden and his wife alone remained to minister to Jeffray in his sickness. The butler was sitting by the open window of Richard’s room, watching for Surgeon Stott and listening to his master’s delirious mutterings. It was Mrs. Barbara who opened the door to Bess that morning and stared at her in some surprise. Mrs. Barbara was a sour-tempered person, very sure of her own importance; nor had the flight of her maids tended to sanctify her resentful soul. “Well, what d’you want, eh?” Bess colored under the woman’s curious stare. There was nothing suggestive of courtesy in Mrs. Gladden’s manner. “I have come to see Mr. Jeffray.” The woman’s eyes studied the girl’s person with impertinent composure. She looked at Bess’s handsome face, considered her clothes, and prepared for circumspection in her dealings with so gypsyish a wench. “What’s your name?” “Bess Grimshaw.” “Grimshaw?” “Yes.” “Where do you come from?” “Pevensel.” “And what’s your business?” Bess’s eyes smouldered at such cross-questioning. Mrs. Barbara’s attitude was brusque and insolent. She was in the habit of bullying the girls under her, and, like an underling intrusted with some authority, she made the most of it, and mistook impertinence for dignity. “I want to see Mr. Jeffray,” quoth Bess, quietly. “You do, do you?”