The eloquence of her own thoughts possessed her. They flowed on in a
warm, mute rhetoric, till suddenly the Comic Spirit was there, and
patriotic rapture began to see itself. She, the wanderer, the exile,
what did she know of England--or England of her? What did she know of
this village even, this valley in which she had pitched her tent? She
had taken an old house, because it had pleased her fancy, because it had
Tudor gables, pretty panelling, and a sundial. But what natural link had
she with it, or with these peasants and countrymen? She had no true
roots here. What she had done was mere whim and caprice. She was an
alien, like anybody else--like the new men and prowling millionaires,
who bought old English properties, moved thereto by a feeling which was
none the less snobbish because it was also sentimental.
She drew herself up--rebelling hotly--yet not seeing how to disentangle
herself from these associates. And she was still struggling to put
herself back in the romantic mood, and to see herself and her experiment
anew in the romantic light, when her maid knocked at the door, and
distraction entered with letters, and a cup of tea.
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