As they climbed the low, broad, lichen-blotched steps, whose broken stone balustrades were almost hidden in clutching, untrimmed ivy, Betty felt them to be almost incredible, too. The uneven stones of the terrace the steps mounted to were lichen-blotched and broken also. Tufts of green growths had forced themselves between the flags, and added an untidy beauty. The ivy tossed in branches over the red roof and walls of the house. It had been left unclipped, until it was rather an endlessly clambering tree than a creeper. The hall they entered had the beauty of spacious form and good, old oaken panelling. There were deep window seats and an ancient high-backed settle or so, and a massive table by the fireless hearth. But there were no pictures in places where pictures had evidently once hung, and the only coverings on the stone floor were the faded remnants of a central rug and a worn tiger skin, the head almost bald and a glass eye knocked out. Bettina took in the unpromising details without a quiver of the extravagant lashes. These, indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof, and a certain minstrel's gallery and staircase, than which nothing could have been much finer, with the look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing Rosy, or of being herself obviously disturbed. She had come to observe situations and rearrange them with that intelligence of which unconsidered emotion or exclamation form no part. “It is the first old English house I have seen,” she said, with a sigh of pleasure. “I am so glad, Rosy--I am so glad that it is yours.” She put a hand on each of Rosy's thin shoulders--she felt sharply defined bones as she did so--and bent to kiss her. It was the natural affectionate expression of her feeling, but tears started to Rosy's eyes, and the boy Ughtred, who had sat down in a window seat, turned red again, and shifted in his place. “Oh, Betty!” was Rosy's faint nervous exclamation, “you seem so beautiful and--so--so strange--that you frighten me.” Betty laughed with the softest possible cheerfulness, shaking her a little. “I shall not seem strange long,” she said, “after I have stayed with you a few weeks, if you will let me stay with you.” “Let you! Let you!” in a sort of gasp. Poor little Lady Anstruthers sank on to a settle and began to cry again. It was plain that she always cried when things occurred. Ughtred's speech from his window seat testified at once to that. “Don't cry, mother,” he said. “You know how we've talked that over together. It's her nerves,” he explained to Bettina. “We know it only makes things worse, but she can't stop it.”