"Anthony Herbert," I repeated. "No, I have never heard the name, though, were he better known, I should doubtless be as ignorant. For this long while I have lived in France."
"It is very careful work," said I, looking closely at the picture.
"Indeed, it errs through excess of care," replied he, "for one's attention is fixed thereby upon the details separately."
"One need have no fear of that," said I, with a bow to Lady Derwentwater, "when such details are so faithfully represented."
The pair smiled at one another, and she laid her hand upon her husband's arm in the prettiest way imaginable.
"The man is staying at Keswick," Lord Derwentwater continued. "That is how I chanced on him. He came hither in the spring for the sake of the landscapes."
"Oh," said I, "at Keswick? Is he, indeed?" and I spoke with something of a start. For a new idea had been brought to me from his words. For, having come clean to the end of my business with the attorney, I had been casting about during the last few days for some fresh cloak and pretext to cover my diurnal journeys from Blackladies, and here, it seemed to me, was as good a solution of the difficulty as a man could wish. It may be that I set too much stress on the need for such a pretext; it may be that I could have ridden hither and thither about the country without any one turning aside to busy himself about my errand. But, in the first place, I was the youngest scholar of conspiracy certainly in experience, if not quite in years, and I was on that account inclined to exaggerate the value of a mysterious secrecy. I took my responsibilities au plus grand sérieux, shrouding them from gaze with an elaborate care, when no one suspected so much as their existence. Moreover, it was the habit of the people in those parts to stay much within their native boundaries; they rarely went afield; indeed, I have heard a dalesman of Howray, by Keswick, confidently assert that at Seatoller, a little village not two miles from Blackladies, the sun never shone between the months of September and March owing to the height of the circumjacent mountains. In a word, those fells which these countrymen saw close before their eyes each morning that they rose, enclosed their country; what lay beyond was foreign land, wherein they had no manner of concern. And this same habit of mind was repeated in their betters, though in a less rude degree. Therefore I thought it did behove me to practise some dissimulation lest either my friends or my enemies should get the wind of my business. So again I said—
"The painter stays at Keswick. And where does he lodge?"
"In the High Street," said Lady Derwentwater; and she named the house.
"But, Mr. Clavering," added the husband, with a laugh, "the painter has a wife, very young and not ill-looking; and he is very jealous. I would warn you to pay no such compliments to her as you have paid to Lady Derwentwater." And he clapped me on the back, and so we went in to dinner.