way what she
should do with that letter. Suppose things had gone too far to be
stopped? But Diana had told her nothing; she was not bound to know by
guess-work. And if this were the _beginning_ of serious proposals, then
it were better known to but herself only. She resolved finally to watch
Diana and the Elmfield people this afternoon; she could find out, she
thought, whether there were any matter of common interest between them.
With all this, Mrs. Starling's temper was not sweetened.

Elmfield was a rare place. Not by the work of art or the craft of the
gardener at all; for a cunning workman had never touched its turf or
its plantations. Indeed it had no plantations, other than such as were
intended for pure use and profit; great fields of Indian corn, and
acres of wheat and rye, and a plot of garden cabbages. Mrs. Reverdy's
power of reform had reached only the household affairs. But the corn
and the rye and the cabbages were out of sight from the immediate home
field; and there the grace of nature had been so great that one almost
forgot to wish that anything had been added to it. A little river
swept, curving in sweet leisure, through a large level tract of
greenest meadows. In front of one of these large curves the house
stood, but well back, so that the meadow served instead of a lawn. It
had no foreign beauties of tree growth to adorn it, nor needed them;
for along the bank of the river, from space to space, irregularly, rose
a huge New England elm, giving the shelter of its canopy of branches to
a wide spot of turf. The house added nothing to the scene, beyond the
human interest; it was just a large old farmhouse, nothing more;
draped, however, and half covered up by other elms and a few fir trees.
But in front of it lay this wide, sunny, level meadow, with the wilful
little stream meandering through, with the stately old trees spotting
it and breaking its monotony; and in the distance a soft outline of
hills, not too far away, and varied enough to be picturesque, rounded
in the whole picture. A picture one would stand long to look at;
thoroughly New England and characteristic; gentle, homelike, lovely,
with just a touch of wildness, intimating that you were beyond the
rules of conventionality. Being New England folk themselves, Mrs.
Starling and Diana of course would not read some of these features.
They only thought it was a "fine place."

Long before they got there this afternoon, before anybody got there,