Unknown to Mortomley, his wife and his new friend travelled from a little country station, then newly set up among the green Hertfordshire fields, to Stratford, which Mrs. Mortomley described in a brief sentence as the "dirtiest place on earth," then they changed carriages for Leytonstone, whence they drove along the road Dolly remembered so well to Homewood. The hinges of the front gate were broken, and they entered the grounds without let or hindrance. Everything had been permitted to go to wreck; the red-thorn-trees had been cut down for fuel, the rare shrubs were hacked and hewn to pieces, the great evergreens were torn about or dead, the clematis and the honeysuckle trailed along the ground over part of the verandah, which had been dragged down by the boys climbing over it; the laurel walk was almost completely destroyed, and upon the lawn, where beds filled with flowers made the summer ever beautiful, a stray horse grazed peacefully. Within, the same tale of ruin was to be read as they had found written outside. The children who squinted and the mother that bore them still were in residence, and there was not a paper on the walls, not an inch of paint, upon which defacing fingers had omitted to leave a mark. The kitchen-garden was a mass of weeds and the drive knee deep in grass. Where those children ought to have walked, they had refrained from treading, but through the shrubberies they had made a path, marking their route, Indian fashion, on the trees. In the remembered summer-house, where so many a pleasant group had in the old times collected, Dolly sat down to await the return of their new friend. He wanted to look at the "works" now bare of plant, at the great yards once filled with casks and carboys, alive with the stir of workmen and the clamour of trade,--all silent now, silent as the grave. At the time of Mortomley's commercial death came the sleek undertaker from Salisbury House, and took away all they could bury of the man and his surroundings. Empty were the stalls of Homewood, bare of oats the mangers, falling to decay the pigeon-houses, tenantless the byres and styes, denuded the barns, but in fancy Mr. Douglas filled them all again with plenty and to spare. Yes, he would buy the lease of Homewood, and once again it should blossom as the rose. He opened his project cautiously to Mrs. Mortomley. The prospect of returning to the beloved home might, he thought, prove too much for her if the idea were broached without due preparation, so he tried, sitting in the summer-house to lead up to it, but found his auditor unsympathetic. "She had loved Homewood dearly." "Did she not love it now?" "Yes, as one loves the dead." "Should not she like to live there once more?" "No; she could never forget, never while life lasted, what she had suffered there."