But the old servant entertained a totally different kind of pride in Master Oliver—of fondness half-protecting, half-reliant for him. She detained him at this moment entirely with his own will, though to the chagrin of his sister. Fan could not understand Oliver’s accessibility to servants, and his ease with them. She was tempted to think he did not know and keep his own place where they were concerned. On the other hand, this conclusion did not coincide with some of her independent observations. Fan had a candour and liberality of observation, in spite of her essential narrowness and concentration of mind, which forced her often to remark effects that puzzled her in her rooted convictions. Fan had learnt from local gossip that there was something of the same bearing as that of Oliver towards his servants in Mr. Ayott of Copley Grange to his confidential and superannuated gamekeepers and nurses. She could not be altogether sure that the simplicity and geniality were not among those secrets of good breeding which were somehow beyond her acquisition. Certainly no servant abused Oliver’s frankness and _bonhomie_. The brother and sister stood in the twilight darkness of the oldest room in the mill, empty at this hour. Oliver would have paused again to make comments on what machinery was dimly revealed, and what store of grain could be faintly discerned. But Fan, who had never from her childhood cared for such details, nipped his intention in the bud and dragged him on. ‘You said you wanted to be in the open air, dear; don’t stay in this musty-fusty place, where I always dread rats.’ Then they went out into the gallery. Oliver pulled out a pile of new sacks to serve as a seat for Fan, and converted a full sack into a pedestal to support the tray he had carried. For himself he was content to loll on the old carved railing, hunching up his shoulders, sinking his head in his breast, thrusting out his bearded chin, squaring his moustached mouth, and blinking with his brown eyes, contriving altogether to look as like a dwarf or humpback, with the grotesquely ugly face which would have served for a gurgoyle, as a stalwart, comely Englishman could well look. At the couple’s feet flowed the Brook, over which the long pendent boughs of the great willow drooped and swayed and dipped their leaves—the blue-green of which was whitened, yellowed, and stained with olive in the water. Before the two stretched the undulating bosky park of Copley Grange, with the rich foliage of its fine trees still in the gay vivid green of June, before it has grown dull, heavy, and monotonous under the heat of July, with the red and white clusters of the thorns competing with the red and white spikes of the chestnuts. The sun was sinking like a ball of fire in the gold and crimson west, where all the magnificence of the sky was still gathered, leaving what had been the dim soft blue of a midsummer day, for a moment, by contrast, cold in its purity in the east.