"Yes," but with a suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission.
She was rather moved.
"Have you been keeper here long?" she asked.
"No--only a few years. But I have known the place all my life."
"Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it?"
"In his way--yes."
He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not
on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no
further information. He was, upon the whole, uncommunicative. He did not
once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was
plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as
a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident
across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was
stubbornly resolved to keep his place; so stubbornly that Bettina felt
that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence.
But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one
she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and
alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues
of blossoming horse-chestnuts and scented limes, between thickets of
budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons;
through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken
balustrades of stone, and fallen Floras and Dianas, past moss-grown
fountains splashing in lovely corners.
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