he must take her
stand in direct opposition to him, and in the meanwhile it would be worse
than foolish to waste breath in idle squabbling.

They were to drive to Wyncomb in the bailiff's gig; rather an obsolete
vehicle, with a yellow body, a mouldy leather apron, and high wheels
picked out with red, drawn by a tall gray horse that did duty with the
plough on ordinary occasions. Stephen Whitelaw's house was within an easy
walk of the Grange; but the gig was a more dignified mode of approach
than a walk, and the bailiff insisted on driving his daughter to her
suitor's abode in that conveyance.

Wyncomb was a long low gray stone house, of an unknown age; a spacious
habitation enough, with many rooms, and no less than three staircases,
but possessing no traces of that fallen grandeur which pervaded the
Grange. It had been nothing better than a farm-house from time
immemorial, and had been added to and extended and altered to suit the
convenience of successive generations of farmers. It was a
gloomy-looking house at all times, Ellen Carley thought, but especially
gloomy under that leaden winter sky; a house which it would have been
almost impossible to associate with pleasant family gatherings or the
joyous voices of young children; a grim desolate-looking house, that
seemed to freeze the passing traveller with its cold blank stare, as if
its gloomy portal had a voice to say to him, "However lost you may be for
lack of shelter, however weary for want of rest, come not here!"

Idle fancies, perhaps; but they were the thoughts with which Wyncomb
Farmhouse always inspired Ellen Carley.

"The place just suits its master's hard miserly nature," she said. "One
would think it had been made on purpose for him; or perhaps the Whitelaws
have been like that from generation to generation."

There was no such useless adornment as a flower-garden at Wyncomb.
Stephen Whitelaw cared about as much for roses and lilies as he cared for
Greek poetry or Beethoven's sonatas. At the back of the house there was a
great patch of bare shadowless ground devoted to cabbages and potatoes,
with a straggling border of savoury herbs; a patch not even divided from
the farm land beyond, but melting imperceptibly into a field of
mangel-wurzel. There were no superfluous hedges upon Mr. Whitelaw's
dominions; not a solitary tree to give shelter to the tired cattle in the
long hot summer days. Noble old oaks and patriarch beeches, tall
sycamores and grand f