time she had nearly made up her mind
it was the hour for luncheon, and little Nellie's appetite was exigent.
By the time lunch was over her determination had changed. She had
reflected that the vicar would think her morbid, that, with his usual
good sense, he would say there was no necessity for telling the squire
anything; indeed, that to do so would be undignified. If the squire were
indeed going to lead the life of a recluse as he proposed doing, he was
not really a man to cause her any apprehension. If he had travelled about
the world for forty years, without having his heart disturbed by any of
the women he must have met in that time, he was certainly not the kind of
man, when once he had determined to settle in his home, to fall in love
with the first pretty woman he met. It was absurd; there was no
likelihood of it; it was her own miserable vanity, she told herself,
which made the thing seem probable, and she would not think any more
about it. She, a woman thirty-one years of age, with a daughter who ere
long would be growing up to womanhood! To be afraid of a mere stranger
like Mr. Juxon--afraid lest he should fall in love with her! Could
anything be more ridiculous? Her duty was to live quietly as she had
lived before, to take no more notice of the squire than was necessary in
order to be civil, and so all would be well.

And so it seemed for a long time. The squire improved the garden of the
cottage and Mrs. Goddard and Nellie, with the Ambroses, dined at the
Hall, which at first seemed an exceedingly dreary and dismal place, but
which, as they returned thither again and again, grew more and more
luxurious, till the transformation was complete. Mr. Juxon brought all
manner of things to the house; vans upon vans arrived, laden with boxes
of books and pictures and oriental carpets and rare objects which the
squire had collected in his many years of travel, and which he appeared
to have stored in London until he had at last inherited the Hall. The
longer the Ambroses and Mrs. Goddard knew him, the more singularly
impressed they were with his reticence concerning himself. He appeared to
have been everywhere, to have seen everything, and he had certainly
brought back a vast collection of more or less valuable objects from his
travels, besides the large library he had accumulated and which contained
many rare and curious editions of ancient books. He was evidently a man
of very good education, and a much better scho