with him in the house as in the open air. She
did not admit it even to herself, but deep in her heart she had begun to
be a little afraid.

Till then she had gone blindly forward, taking in desperation the only
course that seemed to offer her escape from a position that had become
wholly intolerable. But now for the first time misgivings arose within
her. She remembered how slight was her knowledge of the man to whom she
had thus impetuously entrusted her future; and, remembering, something
of her ready confidence went from her. She fell silent also.

"You are not eating anything," said Jeff. She started at his voice and
looked up.

"No, I'm not hungry," she said. "I shall eat all the more presently when
we get out into the open."

He said no more, but finished his own breakfast with businesslike
promptitude.

"Mrs. Grimshaw will take you upstairs," he said then, and went to the
door to call her.

"Where will you be?" Doris asked him shyly, as he stood back for her to
pass.

"I am going round to the stable," he said.

"May I come to you there?" she suggested.

He assented gravely: "Do!"

Granny Grimshaw was in her most garrulous mood. She took Doris up the
old steep stairs and into the low-ceiled room with the lattice window
that looked over the river meadows.

"It's the best room in the house," she told her. "Master Jeff was born
in it, and he's slept here for the past ten years. You won't be lonely,
my dear. My room is just across the passage, and he has gone to the room
at the end which he always had as a boy."

"This is a lovely room," said Doris.

She stood where Jeff had stood before the open window and looked across
the valley.

"I hope you will be very happy here, my dear," said Granny Grimshaw
behind her.

Doris turned round to her impetuously. "Dear Mrs. Grimshaw, I don't like
Jeff to give up the best room to me," she said. "Isn't there another one
that I could have?"

She glanced towards a door that led out of the room in which they were.

"Yes, go in, my dear!" said Granny Grimshaw with a chuckle. "It's all
for you."

Doris opened the door with a quick flush on her cheeks.

"Master Jeff thought you would like a little sitting-room of your own,"
said the old woman behind her.

"Oh, he shouldn't. He shouldn't!" Doris said.

She stood on the threshold of a sunny room that overlooked the garden
with its hedge of lavender and beyond it the orchard with its wealth of
ripe apples shini