Her head sinks back pleasantly on the soft cushions; she looks out on the sunny lawn and the timbered wealth she knows so well. Both the windows are wide open, and a faint evening breeze brings to her couch a breath of mignonette from a parterre outside, which her mother laid out with her own hands when she came to Nutsgrove, a happy bride, twenty-two years before. A thrush that has yearly built his nest in the heart of the gloire de Dijon, the shining leaves of which are fluttering against the casement, bursts into song. Addie closes her eyes, and she is at home once more, living over again the sweet spring evenings of her blissful neglected youth. Armstrong of Kelvick and his trim purified apartments vanish into space; the notched and rickety chairs are back again, the threadbare carpet with its sprays of dim ghostly terns, the dusky curtains. Her work-box is standing in its old place, she hears Pauline's light footsteps flying down the stairs, the boys are calling the dogs
away to "marshy joys" in the grove, and old Sally is hunting the chickens out of the kitchen with a peculiar hooting noise that no throat but her own can produce.
"Miss Lefroy, you have not answered my question yet. You were very fond of Nutsgrove, were you not?"
She starts up, an angry crimson dyeing her face, to find her host leaning forward, his keen hazel eyes fixed intently on hers. She answers vehemently, passionately--
"No, I did not answer you, because I thought it was a senseless question; but I will answer you now, if you insist. Were we fond of Nutsgrove? We were--we were--we were! Will that satisfy you? What else had we to be fond of? We had no father, no mother, no friends, no outside amusements or pleasures, and we wanted nothing--nothing but to be left here together. We were content--oh, yes! Even--even when Polly and I began to grow up, we never longed to go away to London or Paris, to fashionable places, or balls and parties, like other girls; and the boys--they never asked to go to school or foreign parts, never wanted to see the world, like other boys. The woods, the river, the gardens, the dear old farm-yard, gave us all we wanted the whole year round--summer, winter, autumn, spring. Fond of Nutsgrove? Ah, we were! We loved every blade of grass, every mossy stone, every clump of earth; every flower and every leaf of the trees was dearer to us than they can be to you if you live here half a century. Now you are answered, Mr. Armstrong, and very rudely and impertinently too; but--but I could not help myself. I--I am very hot-tempered, and you should not have persisted when you saw--when you saw--"