And Betty had come
to Stornham--Betty whom he had detested as a child--and in the course of
two days, she had seemed to become a new part of the atmosphere, and to
make the dead despair of the place begin to stir with life. What other
thing than this was happening as she spoke of making such rooms as the
Rosebud Boudoir "look as they ought to look," and said the words not
as if they were part of a fantastic vision, but as if they expressed a
perfectly possible thing?
Betty saw the doubt in her eyes, and in a measure, guessed at its
meaning. The time to pause for argument had, however not arrived. There
was too much to be investigated, too much to be seen. She swept her on
her way. They wandered on through some forty rooms, more or less; they
opened doors and closed them; they unbarred shutters and let the sun
stream in on dust and dampness and cobwebs. The comprehension of the
situation which Betty gained was as valuable as it was enlightening.
The descent into the lower part of the house was a new experience. Betty
had not before seen huge, flagged kitchens, vaulted servants' halls,
stone passages, butteries and dairies. The substantial masonry of the
walls and arched ceilings, the stone stairway, and the seemingly
endless offices, were interestingly remote in idea from such domestic
modernities as chance views of up-to-date American household workings
had provided her.
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