look, the third
window left of the porch, first floor. That was my room before I married.
Strangers have been here and called the place home. It can never be home
to any but me and Rowsley. He sees the carriage. He little thinks! He's
dressed in his white corduroy and knee-breeches. Age! he won't know age
till he's ninety. Here he comes marching. He can't bear surprises. I'll
wave my hand and call.'

She called his name.

In a few strides he was at the carriage window. 'You, Charlotte?'

'Home again, Rowsley! Bring down your eyebrows, and let me hear you're
glad I 've come.'

'What made you expect you would find me here?'

'Anything-cats on the tiles at night. You can't keep a secret from me.
Here's Mr. Weyburn, good enough to be my escort. I 'll get out.'

She alighted, scorning help; Weyburn at her heels. The earl nodded to him
politely and not cordially. He was hardly cordial to Lady Charlotte.

That had no effect on her. 'A glorious day for Steignton,' she said. 'Ah,
there's the Buridon group of beeches; grander trees than grow at Buridon.
Old timber now. I knew them slim as demoiselles. Where 's the ash? We had
a splendid ash on the west side.'

'Dead and cut down long since,' replied the earl.

'So we go!'

She bent her steps to the spot: a grass-covered heave of the soil.

'Dear old tree!' she said, in a music of elegy: and to Weyburn: 'Looks
like a stump of an arm lopped off a shoulder in bandages. Nature does it
so. All the tenants doing well, Rowsley?'

'About the same amount of trouble with them.'

'Ours at Olmer get worse.'

'It's a process for the extirpation of the landlords.'

'Then down goes the country.'

'They 've got their case, their papers tell us.'

'I know they have; but we've got the soil, and we'll make a, fight of
it.'

'They can fight too, they say.'

'I should be sorry to think they couldn't if they're Englishmen.'

She spoke so like his old Charlotte of the younger days that her brother
partly laughed.

'Parliamentary fighting 's not much to your taste or mine. They 've lost
their stomach for any other. The battle they enjoy is the battle that
goes for the majority. Gauge their valour by that.'

'To be sure,' said his responsive sister. She changed her note. 'But what
I say is, let the nobles keep together and stick to their class. There's
nothing to fear then. They must marry among themselves, think of the
blood: it's their first duty. Or better a peasant girl! M