And it was not his fault
but the landlord's that the farmhouse and buildings had been allowed to
fall into such a state. Mr. Wellin had not wanted the house, since he was
only working the land temporarily in addition to his own farm half a mile
away. But the owner, Colonel Shepherd, ought to have looked after the
farmhouse and buildings better. Still, they were making her a fair
allowance for repairs.

She was longing to know how the workmen from Millsboro had been getting
on. Hastings, the Wellins' former bailiff, now temporarily hers, had
promised to stay behind that evening to meet her at the farm. She only
meant to insist on what was absolutely necessary. Even if she had wished
for anything more, the lack of labour would have prevented it.

The old horse jogged on, and presently from a row of limes beside the
road, a wave of fragrance, evanescent and delicious, passed over the
carriage. Miss Henderson sniffed it with delight. "But one has never
_enough_ of it!" she thought discontentedly. And then she remembered how
as a child--in far-away Sussex--she used to press her face into the
lime-blossom in her uncle's garden--passionately, greedily, trying to get
from it a greater pleasure than it would ever yield. For the more she
tried to compel it, by a kind of violence, the more it escaped her. She
used to envy the bees lying drunk among the blooms. They at least were
surfeited and satisfied.

It struck her that there was a kind of parable in it of her whole
life--so far.

But now there was a new world opening. The past was behind her. She drew
herself stiffly erect, conscious through every limb of youth and
strength, and filled with a multitude of vague hopes. Conscious, too, of
the three thousand pounds that Uncle Robert had so opportunely left her.
She had never realized that money could make so much difference; and she
thought gratefully of the elderly bachelor, her mother's brother, who had
unexpectedly remembered her. It had enabled her to get her year's
training, and to take this farm with a proper margin of capital. She
wished she had been able to tell Uncle Robert before he died what it
meant to her.

They passed one or two pairs of labourers going home, then a group of
girls in overalls, then a spring cart containing four workmen behind a
ragged pony, no doubt the builder's men who had been at work on the Great
End repairs. They all looked at her curiously, and Rachel Henderson
looked back at them--stead