At length a lad who was a helper said to mock her-- "The man hath him at the door before the great steps now.

I saw him stand there waiting but a moment ago.

The man hath gone in the house." She turned and ran to find him.

The front part of the house she barely knew the outside of, as she was kept safely in the west wing and below stairs, and when taken out for the air was always led privately by a side way--never passing through the great hall, where her father might chance to encounter her.
She knew best this side-entrance, and made her way to it, meaning to search until she found the front.

She got into the house, and her spirit being roused, marched boldly through corridors and into rooms she had never seen before, and being so mere a child, notwithstanding her strange wilfulness and daring, the novelty of the things she saw so far distracted her mind from the cause of her anger that she stopped more than once to stare up at a portrait on a wall, or to take in her hand something she was curious concerning.
When she at last reached the entrance-hall, coming into it through a door she pushed open, using all her childish strength, she stood in the midst of it and gazed about her with a new curiosity and pleasure.