shuffled his copy out of sight while the opulent matron, rising from her repose, broke out: ‘I feel already the good of this air!’

‘I can’t say I do,’ said the angular lady. ‘I find myself quite let down.’

‘I find myself horribly hungry. At what time did you order lunch?’ her protectress pursued.

The young person put the question by. ‘Doctor Hugh always orders it.’

‘I ordered nothing to-day—I’m going to make you diet,’ said their comrade.

‘Then I shall go home and sleep. Qui dort dine!’

‘Can I trust you to Miss Vernham?’ asked Doctor Hugh of his elder companion.

‘Don’t I trust you?’ she archly inquired.

‘Not too much!’ Miss Vernham, with her eyes on the ground, permitted herself to declare. ‘You must come with us at least to the house,’ she went on, while the personage on whom they appeared to be in attendance began to mount higher. She had got a little out of ear-shot; nevertheless Miss Vernham became, so far as Dencombe was concerned, less distinctly audible to murmur to the young man: ‘I don’t think you realize all you owe the Countess!’

Absently, a moment, Doctor Hugh caused his gold-rimmed spectacles to shine at her.

‘Is that the way I strike you? I see—I see!’

‘She’s awfully good to us,’ continued Miss Vernham, compelled by her interlocutor’s immovability to stand there in spite of his discussion of private matters. Of what use would it have been that Dencombe should be sensitive to shades had he not detected in that immovability a strange influence from the quiet old convalescent in the great tweed cape? Miss Vernham appeared suddenly to become aware of some such connexion, for she added in a moment: ‘If you want to sun yourself here you can come back after you’ve seen us home.’

Doctor Hugh, at this, hesitated, and Dencombe, in spite of a desire to pass for unconscious, risked a covert glance at him. What his eyes met this time, as it happened, was on the part of the young lady a queer stare, naturally vitreous, which made her aspect remind him of some figure (he couldn’t name it) in a play or a novel, some sinister governess or tragic old maid. She seemed to scrutinize him, to challenge him, to say, from general spite: ‘What have you got to do with us?’ At the same instant the rich humour of the Countess reached them from above: ‘Come, come, my little lambs, you should follow your old bergère!’ Miss Vernham turned away at this, pursuing the ascent, and Doctor Hugh, after another mute appeal to Dencombe and a moment’s evident demur, deposited his book on the bench, as if to keep his place or even as a sign that he would return, and bounded without difficulty up the rougher part of the cliff.

Equally innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation and the resources engendered by the habit of analysing life. It amused poor Dencombe, as he dawdled in his tepid air-bath, to think that he was waiting for a revelation of something at the back of a fine young mind. He looked hard at the book on the end of the bench, but he wouldn’t have touched it for the world. It served his purpose to have a theory which should not be exposed to refutation. He already felt better of his melancholy; he had, according to his old formula, put his head at the window. A passing Countess could draw off the fancy when, like the elder of the ladies who had just retreated, she was as obvious as the giantess of a caravan. It was indeed general views that were terrible; short ones, contrary to an opinion sometimes expressed, were the refuge, were the remedy. Doctor Hugh couldn’t possibly be anything but a reviewer who had understandings for early copies with publishers or with newspapers. He reappeared in a quarter of an