ousehold business, or sat in the chamber
upstairs with Mistress Alice; and it was of these things that she talked
with the few priests that came and went from time to time in their
circuits about Derbyshire. It was a life of quietness and monotony
inconceivable by those who live in towns. Its sole incident lay in that
life which is called Interior....

It was soon after the New Year that she met the squire of Matstead face
to face.

* * * * *

She and Alice, with Janet and a man riding behind, were on their way
back from Derby, where they had gone for their monthly shopping. They
had slept at Dethick, and had had news there of Mr. Anthony, who was
again in the south on one of his mysterious missions, and started again
soon after dawn next day to reach home, if they could, for dinner.

She knew Alice now for what she was--a woman of astounding dullness, of
sterling character, and of a complete inability to understand any shades
or tones of character or thought that were not her own, and yet a friend
in a thousand, of an immovable stability and loyalty, one of no words at
all, who dwelt in the midst of a steady kind of light which knew no dawn
nor sunset. The girl entertained herself sometimes with conceiving of
her friend confronted with the rack, let us say, or the gallows; and
perceived that she knew with exactness what her behaviour would be: She
would do all that was required of her with out speeches or protest; she
would place herself in the required positions, with a faint smile,
unwavering; she would suffer or die with the same tranquil steadiness as
that in which she lived; and, best of all, she would not be aware, even
for an instant, that anything in her behaviour was in the least
admirable or exceptional. She resembled, to Marjorie's mind, that for
which a strong and well-built arm-chair stands in relation to the body:
it is the same always, supporting and sustaining always, and cannot even
be imagined as anything else.

* * * * *

It was a brilliant frosty day, as they rode over the rutted track
between hedges that served for a road, that ran, for the most part, a
field or two away from the black waters of the Derwent. The birches
stood about them like frozen feathers; the vast chestnuts towered
overhead, motionless in the motionless air. As they came towards
Matstead, and, at last, rode up the street, naturally enough Marjorie
again began t