How often had she heard that books afforded the surest consolation to the desolate.
She would take to reading; not on this special day, but as the resource for many days and months, and years to come.

But this idea had faded and become faint, before she had left the gloomy, damp-feeling, chill room, in which some former Lord Ongar had stored the musty Volumes which he had thought fit to purchase.

The library gave her no ease, so she went out again among the lawns and shrubs.

For some time to come her best resources must be those which she could find outside the house.
Peering about, she made her way behind the stables, which were attached to the house, to a farm-yard gate, through which the way led to the headquarters of the live stock.

She did not go through, but she looked over the gate, telling herself that those barns and sheds, that wealth of straw-yard, those sleeping pigs and idle, dreaming calves, were all her own.