“It is the new life in her which strikes me,” he said. “She has brought wealth with her, and wealth is power to do the good or evil that grows in a man's soul; but she has brought something more. She might have come here and brought all the sumptuousness of a fashionable young beauty, who drove through the village and drew people to their windows, and made clodhoppers scratch their heads and pull their forelocks, and children bob curtsies and stare. She might have come and gone and left a mind-dazzling memory and nothing else. A few sovereigns tossed here and there would have earned her a reputation--but, by gee! to quote Selden--she has begun LIVING with them, as if her ancestors had done it for six hundred years. And what _I_ see is that if she had come without a penny in her pocket she would have done the same thing.” He paused a pondering moment, and then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamation in itself. “She's Life!” he said. “She's Life itself! Good God! what a thing it is for a man or woman to be Life--instead of a mass of tissue and muscle and nerve, dragged about by the mere mechanism of living!” Penzance had listened seriously. “What you say is very suggestive,” he commented. “It strikes me as true, too. You have seen something of her also, at least more than I have.” “I did not think these things when I saw her--though I suppose I felt them unconsciously. I have reached this way of summing her up by processes of exclusion and inclusion. One hears of her, as you know yourself, and one thinks her over.” “You have thought her over?” “A lot,” rather grumpily. “A beautiful female creature inevitably gives an unbeautiful male creature something to think of--if he is not otherwise actively employed. I am not. She has become a sort of dawning relief to my hopeless humours. Being a low and unworthy beast, I am sometimes resentful enough of the unfairness of things. She has too much.” When they rode through Stornham village they saw signs of work already done and work still in hand. There were no broken windows or palings or hanging wicket gates; cottage gardens had been put in order, and there were evidences of such cheering touches as new bits of window curtain and strong-looking young plants blooming between them. So many small, but necessary, things had been done that the whole village wore the aspect of a place which had taken heart, and was facing existence in a hopeful spirit. A year ago Mount Dunstan and his vicar riding through it had been struck by its neglected and dispirited look. As they entered the hall of the Court Miss Vanderpoel was descending the staircase. She was laughing a little to herself, and she looked pleased when she saw them. “It is good of you to come,” she said, as they crossed the hall to the drawing-room. “But I told him I really thought you would. I have just been talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to whether he had assumed too much.”