She was near the house, so near that it seemed to throb out to her with sympathy. She put out her hand and touched the spick, newly-painted walls. With a quick feeling of resentment she saw that they had cut down the Devoniensis rose--that globular, foam-like, ethereal thing which she had worshiped more than any of the roses. She looked down, round, up, making mental, resentful notes of everything. There were pert pots on the wide-throated chimneys, grotesque and poor-looking. There was a new window upstairs, high and narrow, filled with stained glass. That must be the bath-room. Most of the upper rooms were dimly lighted. She had often insisted that this was the proper thing to do--in good houses. Jethro had resisted the innovation, with a view to the oil involved. Yes! She stopped, her head critically on one side, her heart becoming more tolerant of the many changes. This looked a good house, a house that a lady might live in: she was full of these commonplace expressions that smack of the housekeeper’s room. Lights in every window, jealously drawn blinds. It looked like a house where they dined late, where, about this time, the maids were tripping to the bedroom doors with cans of hot water. The house had all the appearance of a good house--a gentleman’s, as distinct from a yeoman’s, so she thought, beginning to be satisfied and then remembering that it made no difference to her now. She went round the house stealthily, like a gypsy woman with a basket of cheap lace. The dog bounded out of the kennel, then wagged his tail when she went close and he recognized her. She went round, went past the woodstack. As she passed, a sandy rat, whose young family lived in the shelter of the fagots, ran timidly over her foot. She reached at last the back door. It stood open; she had always grumbled at the maids, in vain, because they would have the back door open. Everything around the door was much the same, the modern spirit had not affected the back of the house. There was the pig-tub waiting to be carried to the stye, there was the ash-heap, the other heap of broken crockery and old iron. There were the rain-water tubs lurking in the angles of the house, their green paint turning blue. She looked up at the sky and found that the mist had risen, that the mellow moon was full on her head. She saw everything. Her eyes stretched away into the garden, through the entrance-arch of which she saw the glittering glass of the greenhouse which Jethro had bought to please her.