Other trees there were none, nor any other houses within sight, nothing but the tan rolling of the Downs and the road that climbed the hill and was lost to sight over the other side. She descried Calladine there at his gate, waiting for her, exactly as she had expected to find him. “I hesitated between coming to fetch you myself, and remaining here to welcome you when you arrived,” he said, as he came forward to help her out of the gig. She knew at once how pleased he was to see her. There was no affectation about his pleasure. It was a tremendous event for him to receive her at his house, and he conducted her with infinite solicitude, and a half-hesitation which, she knew, was intended to give her the opportunity of noticing and commenting upon every detail. By a curious process now all the naïveté of her childishness and her upbringing dropped from her, and she became as delicately gracious as any skilful woman; she remained a little aloof from him, receiving his deference as though it were her due, rewarding him in exchange with her friendliness and her interest, smiling at his eagerness with an amused and sympathetic smile, placing here and there the word of approval he most desired, and bestowing upon his possessions the appreciation or the gentle derision which for ever after would advance them in his eyes. He had never before seen her in this mood. He was bewildered and charmed. He had known her delightful and inconsequent, wayward and perplexing; he had seen her as a child, he had thought of her as a spirit, he had never yet seen her as a woman. Her very gestures, he thought, were different; quieter, more secure; and yet she had not lost that fugitive air of hers, that shy grace; the combination enchanted him. He followed her into the house; he was sure, now, that Starvecrow was pleasing her; he need not have been so apprehensive. To rest his eyes upon her in his little hall, so cool in her lilac frock, filled him with the deepest and most disturbing joy. It was he, now, who grew tremulous and at a loss, while she remained so exquisitely self-possessed. Seeing that he scarcely knew how best to carry on his hospitality,--for he seemed incapable of anything but of gazing at her,--it was she who led the way into the inner room, and touched his books and looked at the pictures on his walls, and at the view out of his window. Had he but known it, she was thinking Starvecrow worthy of its name, a desolate place, in a situation without the grandeur to compensate for its austerity, and without the comfort to excuse its meanness. “You should plant some cottage roses against your house,” she said, “and some bushes of Old Man’s Beard.” “It shall be done,” he replied, without taking his eyes off her.