She had known almost from the first that the task she had set herself would not be an easy one, but Violet had always had courage, the type of moral courage which laughs at chattering tongues and the narrow, confining codes of social convention. But it was only as she grew to know Robert better that she realised how deeply rooted he stood in his traditional environment. She had rebelled against the smug pomposity that was an inescapable part of her father’s ducal home in Lincolnshire. But Robert had no wish to rebel or to escape from anything that was Cheveron.

It all came back to her so vividly, for she had been born and bred in just that very same atmosphere which she knew existed at Cheveron. There were the tenants who had served the Great House generation after generation, the employees who for centuries had relied on the same family for their livelihood, their jobs passing from father to son as part of their natural heritage. There was the Church built in the Park, its Living in the gift of the Lord of the Manor, its huge carved pew set apart for him.

There was the Home Farm from which employees in the Estate obtained free milk, the gardens which meant free vegetables to the same number of families, the laundry where many of the girls first started their domestic service, the stables, the carpenters’ shops, the Estate Office – all creating a world within a world, a state within a state, with one interest, one ambition – service to the Great House.

Little things, trivial things, but all meaning so much when they were added together. The Great House was an institution, too, for many others. For the neighbours who would drive over for dinner parties, come to tea on Sundays and attend the big annual garden party when all the County would be invited. They had almost a language of their own, too, in their knowledge of local gossip and local customs. The conversation was invariably the same, Violet used to think.

There would be trouble between the M.F.H. and a farmer who was incensed because the foxes had eaten some of his hens, there would be arguments about the shooting prospects and the right way to rear pheasants, gloomy predictions about the crops, optimistic hopes of a new hunter or a litter of puppies, and a general agreement that the country as a whole was ‘going to the dogs’.

How well Violet knew it all! How much she had hated that life, and how glad she had been to escape from it! Yet Robert loved it. She knew he did from the warmth of his tone when he spoke of his home. She could hear the added depth in his voice, see the affection in his eyes.