She was certainly consumed with curiosity; but that was not the only feeling which Mrs. Woodgate entertained towards the lady who was to be a nearer neighbor of her own sex and class than any she could count as yet.  On the class question Morna had no misgivings; nevertheless, she was prepared for a surprise.  Both she and her husband had seen a good deal of Mr. Steel.  Morna had perhaps seen the best of him, since she was at once young and charming, and not even an unwilling and personally innocent candidate for his hand, like honest Sybil Venables.  Yet Morna herself was not more attracted than repelled by the inscrutable personality of this rich man dropped from the clouds, who had never a word to say about his former life, never an anecdote to tell, never an adventure to record, and of whom even Mrs. Venables had not the courage to ask questions.  What sort of woman would such a man marry, and what sort of woman would marry such a man?  Morna asked herself the one question after the other, almost as often as she set her right foot in front of her left; but she was not merely inquisitive in the matter, she had a secret and instinctive compassion for the woman who had done this thing.

“She will not have a soul to call her own, poor thing!” thought Morna, as indignantly as though the imaginary evil was one of the worst that could befall; for the vicar’s wife had her little weaknesses, not by any means regarded as such by herself; and this was one of the last things that could have been said about her, or that she would have cared to hear.

The woodland path led at last into the long avenue, and there was Normanthorpe House at the end of the vista; an Italian palace transplanted into the north of England, radiantly white between the green trees and blue sky, with golden cupola burning in the sun; perhaps the best specimen extant to mark a passing fashion in Georgian architecture, but as ill-suited to the Delverton district as an umbrella-tent to the North Pole.  A cool grotto on a really hot day, the house was an ice-pit on any other; or so Mrs. Woodgate fancied, fresh from the cosey Vicarage, and warm from her rapid walk, as she stepped into another temperature, across polished marble that struck a chill through the soles of her natty brown shoes, and so into the lofty drawing-room with pilasters and elaborate architraves to the doors.  What a place for a sane man to build in bleak old Delverton, even before there was any Northborough to blacken and foul the north-east wind on its way from the sea!  What a place for a sane man to buy; and yet, in its cool white smoothness, its glaring individuality, its alien air—­how like the buyer!

Though it was May, and warm enough for the month and place, Morna got up when the footman had left her, and thrust one brown shoe after the other as near as she could to the wood fire that glimmered underneath the great, ornate, marble mantelpiece.  Then she sat down again, and wondered what to say; for Morna was at once above and below the conversational average of her kind.  Soon she was framing a self-conscious apology for premature intrusion—­Mrs. Steel was so long in coming.  But at last there was a rustle in the conservatory, and a slender figure in a big hat stood for an instant on the threshold.