Mrs. Tregonell sighed, ever so faintly, in the twilight. She was thinking of her first lover, and how that fragility, which meant early death, had showed itself in his inability to enjoy the moorland walks which were the delight of her girlhood.
"The natural result of bad habits," said Miss Bridgeman, briskly. "How can you expect to be strong or active, when I dare say you have spent the better part of your life in hansom cabs and express trains! I don't mean to be impertinent, but I know that is the general way with gentlemen out of the shooting and hunting season."
"And as I am no sportsman, I am a somewhat exaggerated example of the vice of laziness fostered by congenial circumstances, acting on a lymphatic temperament. If you write books, as I believe most ladies do now-a-days, you should put me into one of them, as an awful warning."
"I don't write books, and, if I did, I would not flatter your vanity by making you my model sinner," retorted Jessie; "but I'll do something better for you, if Christabel will help me. I'll reform you."
"A million thanks for the mere thought! I hope the process will be pleasant."
"I hope so, too. We shall begin by walking you off your legs."
"They are so indifferent as a means of locomotion that I could very well afford to lose them, if you could hold out any hope of my getting a better pair."
"A week hence, if you submit to my treatment, you will be as active as the chamois hunter in 'Manfred.'"
"Enchanting – always provided that you and Miss Courtenay will follow the chase with me."
"Depend upon it, we shall not trust you to take your walks alone, unless you have a pedometer which will bear witness to the distance you have done, and which you will be content to submit to our inspection on your return," replied Jessie, sternly.
"I am afraid you are a terribly severe high priestess of this new form of culture," said Mr. Hamleigh, looking up from his teacup with a lazy smile, "almost as bad as the Dweller on the Threshold, in Bulwer's 'Zanoni.'"
"There is a dweller on the threshold of every science and every admirable mode of life, and his name is Idleness," answered Miss Bridgeman.
"The vis inertiæ, the force of letting things alone," said Angus; "yes, that is a tremendous power, nobly exemplified by vestries and boards of works – to say nothing of Cabinets, Bishops, and the High Court of Chancery! I delight in that verse of Scripture, 'Their strength is to sit still.'"
"There shall be very little sitting still for you if you submit yourself to Christabel and me," replied Miss Bridgeman.
"I have never tried the water-cure – the descriptions I have heard from adepts have been too repellent; but I have an idea that this system of yours must be rather worse than hydropathy," said Angus, musingly – evidently very much entertained at the way in which Miss Bridgeman had taken him in hand.
"I was not going to let him pose after Lamartine's poëte mourant, just because his father died of lung disease," said Jessie, ten minutes afterwards, when the warning gong had sounded, and Mr. Hamleigh had gone to his room to dress for dinner, and the two young women were whispering together before the fire, while Mrs. Tregonell indulged in a placid doze.
"Do you think he is consumptive, like his father?" asked Christabel, with a compassionate look; "he has a very delicate appearance."
"Hollow-cheeked, and prematurely old, like a man who has lived on tobacco and brandy-and-soda, and has spent his nights in club-house card-rooms."
"We have no right to suppose that," said Christabel, "since we know really nothing about him."
"Major Bree told me he has lived a racketty life, and that if he were not to pull up very soon he would be ruined both in health and fortune."
"What can the Major know about him?" exclaimed Christabel, contemptuously.
This Major Bree was a great friend of Christabel's; but there are times when one's nearest and dearest are too provoking for endurances.
"Major Bree has been buried alive in Cornwall for the last twenty years. He is at least a quarter of a century behind the age," she said, impatiently.
"He spent a fortnight in London the year before last," said Jessie; "it was then that he heard such a bad account of Mr. Hamleigh."
"Did he go about to clubs and places making inquiries, like a private detective?" said Christabel, still contemptuous; "I hate such fetching and carrying!"
"Here he comes to answer for himself," replied Jessie, as the door opened, and a servant announced Major Bree.
Mrs. Tregonell started from her slumbers at the opening of the door, and rose to greet her guest. He was a very frequent visitor, so frequent that he might be said to live at Mount Royal, although his nominal abode was a cottage on the outskirts of Boscastle – a stone cottage on the crest of a steep hill-side, with a delightful little garden, perched, as it were, on the edge of a verdant abyss. He was tall, stout, elderly, grey, and florid – altogether a comfortable-looking man, clean-shaved, save for a thin grey moustache with the genuine cavalry droop, iron grey eyebrows, which looked like a repetition of the moustache on a somewhat smaller scale, keen grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a well set-up figure. He dressed well, with a sobriety becoming his years, and was always the pink of neatness. A man welcome everywhere, on account of an inborn pleasantness, which prompted him always to say and do the right thing; but most of all welcome at Mount Royal, as a first cousin of the late Squire's, and Mrs. Tregonell's guide, philosopher, and friend in all matters relating to the outside world, of which, despite his twenty years' hybernation at Boscastle, the widow supposed him to be an acute observer and an infallible judge. Was he not one of the few inhabitants of that western village who took in the Times newspaper?
"Well!" exclaimed Major Bree, addressing himself generally to the three ladies, "he has come – what do you think of him?"
"He is painfully like his poor father," said Mrs. Tregonell.
"He has a most interesting face and winning manner, and I'm afraid we shall all get ridiculously fond of him," said Miss Bridgeman, decisively.
Christabel said nothing. She knelt on the hearthrug, playing with Randie, the black-and-white sheep-dog.
"And what have you to say about him, Christabel?" asked the Major.
"Nothing. I have not had time to form an opinion," replied the girl; and then lifting her clear blue eyes to the Major's friendly face, she said, gravely, "but I think, Uncle Oliver, it was very unkind and unfair of you to prejudice Jessie against him before he came here."
"Unkind! – unfair! Here's a shower of abuse! I prejudice! Oh! I remember. Mrs. Tregonell asked me what people thought of him in London, and I was obliged to acknowledge that his reputation was – well – no better than that of the majority of young men who have more money than common sense. But that was two years ago —Nous avons changé tout cela!"
"If he was wicked then, he must be wicked now," said Christabel.
"Wicked is a monstrously strong word!" said the Major. "Besides, that does not follow. A man may have a few wild oats to sow, and yet become a very estimable person afterwards. Miss Bridgeman is tremendously sharp – she'll be able to find out all about Mr. Hamleigh from personal observation before he has been here a week. I defy him to hide his weak points from her."
"What is the use of being plain and insignificant if one has not some advantage over one's superior fellow-creatures?" asked Jessie.
"Miss Bridgeman has too much expression to be plain, and she is far too clever to be insignificant," said Major Bree, with a stately bow. He always put on a stately manner when he addressed himself to Jessie Bridgeman, and treated her in all things with as much respect as if she had been a queen. He explained to Christabel that this was the homage which he paid to the royalty of intellect; but Christabel had a shrewd suspicion that the Major cherished a secret passion for Miss Bridgeman, as exalted and as hopeless as the love that Chastelard bore for Mary Stuart. He had only a small pittance besides his half-pay, and he had a very poor opinion of his own merits; so it was but natural that, at fifty-five,