After her talk with Major Mannering, and because the morning was fine and the Squire was away, she had dragged a small table out into the garden, in front of the library, and set to work there on a part of the new catalogue of the collections, which she and Mr.Levasseur were making.

She did not, however, like Mr.
Levasseur.

Something in her, indeed, disapproved of him strongly.
She had already managed to dislodge him a good deal from his former intimacy with the Squire.

Luckily she was a much better scholar than he, though she admitted that his artistic judgment was worth having.
As a shelter from a rather cold north wind, she was sitting in full sun under the protection of a yew hedge of ancient growth, which ran out at right angles to the library, and made one side of a quadrangular rose-garden, planted by Mrs.Mannering long ago, and now, like everything else, in confusion and neglect.
Presently she heard voices on the other side of the hedge--Mrs.
Strang, no doubt, and Mrs.Gaddesden.She did not take much to either lady.

Mrs.Strang seemed to her full of good intentions, but without practical ability to fit them.