She had never been a woman to seek, accepting only, happily,
whatever gifts life brought her; and it seemed as natural to her that
things should be taken as that things should be given. But with the
renouncement of more various outlooks this autumnal quietness, too, had
brought its gift, discreet, delicate, a whispered sentence, as it were,
that one could only listen to blindfolded, but that, once heard, gave one
the knowledge of a hidden treasure. Sir Basil had been one of the reasons,
the greatest reason, for her happiness in the Surrey nest. It was since
coming there to live that she had grown to know him so well, with the
slow-developing, deep-rooted intimacy of country life. The meadows and
parks of Thremdon Hall encompassed all about the heath where Valerie
Upton's cottage stood among its trees. They were Sir Basil's woods that ran
down to her garden walls and Sir Basil's lanes that, at the back of the
cottage, led up, through the heather, to the little village, a mile or so
away. She had met Sir Basil before coming to live there, once or twice in
London, and once or twice for week-ends at country-houses; but he was not a
person whom one came really to know in drawing-room conditions; indeed, at
the country-houses one hardly saw him except at breakfast and dinner; he
was always hunting, golfing, or playing billiards, and in the interludes to
these occupations one found him a trifle somnolent. It was after settling
quite under his wing--and that she was under it she had discovered only
after falling in love with the little white cottage and rushing eagerly
into tenancy--that she had found out what a perfect neighbor he was; then
come to feel him as a near friend; then, as those other friends had termed
it, to care for him.
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