Owen had obtained her consent to
two or three alternative proposals, and she had then left him to
himself. From her bed, that she had had prepared, with Alice
Babington's, in a loft--turning out for the night the farm-men who had
usually slept there, she had heard more than once the sound of distant
hammering from the main front of the house where her own room lay, that
had been once her mother's as well.
The possibilities in this little manor were small. To construct a
passage, giving an exterior escape, as had been made in some houses,
would have meant here a labour of weeks, and she had told the young man
she would be content with a simple hiding-hole. Yet, although she did
not expect great things, and knew, moreover, the kind of place that he
would make, she was as excited as a child, in a grave sort of way, at
what she would see.
He took her first into the parlour, where years ago Robin had talked
with her in the wintry sunshine. The open chimney was on the right as
they entered, and though she knew that somewhere on that same side would
be one of the two entrances that had been arranged, all the difference
she could see was that a piece of the wall-hanging that had been between
the window and the fire was gone, and that there hung in its place an
old picture painted on a panel. She looked at this without speaking: the
wall was wainscoted in oak, as it had always been, six feet up from the
floor. Then an idea came to her: she tilted the picture on one side.
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