A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling.
An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy.
We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house.
Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady.
As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place.
"Queer spot to choose, is it not?" said he as if in answer to my thought. "And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?"
"Quite happy," said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words.
"I had a school," said Stapleton.
"It was in the north country.
The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me.