Betty had not before seen huge, flagged kitchens, vaulted servants' halls, stone passages, butteries and dairies.

The substantial masonry of the walls and arched ceilings, the stone stairway, and the seemingly endless offices, were interestingly remote in idea from such domestic modernities as chance views of up-to-date American household workings had provided her.
In the huge kitchen itself, an elderly woman, rolling pastry, paused to curtsy to them, with stolid curiosity in her heavy-featured face.

In her character as "single-handed" cook, Mrs.Noakes had sent up uninviting meals to Lady Anstruthers for several years, but she had not seen her ladyship below stairs before.

And this was the unexpected arrival--the young lady there had been "talk of" from the moment of her appearance.
Mrs.Noakes admitted with the grudgingness of a person of uncheerful temperament, that looks like that always would make talk.

A certain degree of vague mental illumination led her to agree with Robert, the footman, that the stranger's effectiveness was, perhaps, also, not altogether a matter of good looks, and certainly it was not an affair of clothes.