She either could not understand, or did not care for what he said.

The house always had brought her in about so many dollars a year; she believed it always would; at any rate, she wanted this money.

And so it came to pass that the mortgage on the old Jacobs house had come into Stephen White's hands, and he was now living in one half of it, his own tenant and landlord at once, as he often laughingly said.
These old rumors and sayings about the Jacobs's family history were running in Stephen's head this evening, as he stood listlessly leaning on the gate, and looking down at the unsightly spot of bare earth still left where the gate had so long stood pressed back against the fence.
"I wonder how long it'll take to get that old rut smooth and green like the rest of the yard," he thought.

Stephen White absolutely hated ugliness.

It did not merely irritate and depress him, as it does everybody of fine fastidiousness: he hated not only the sight of it, he hated it with a sort of unreasoning vindictiveness.