He laughed, but all the time one who observed him closely might see that he was becoming more constrained and preoccupied, as if there were some struggle going on in his mind.
'You have not told me that other little story yet. Suppose you tell it to me by the hymenosperum tree; and, by the way, you must say something distinctive about that graceful creature—something that will go with the image of it when it rises in my memory: tall and slender, arrayed in pale saffron, like an Eastern bride.'
'I am sure I cannot think of anything more distinctive than that,' laughed Stella. 'I shall borrow a metaphor and give it to you. "As a saint is to ordinary good people, so is a hymenosperum to other flowering trees."'
'Here is our tree,' said Langdale, 'with a little rural seat near. Now, please tell me your story.'
She told him Thomson's little narrative, not forgetting to give a rapid, brilliant little sketch of her old friend Mr. Ferrier—'the best little man in the world; but he is like cheese o'er renneted; so much in earnest that he can enjoy hardly any of the play of life.'
'I think we may put that down as a thirty-seventh tragic situation,' said Langdale; 'the poor man trying in his simple fashion to Christianize the savage mother of his child; and the two breaking into loud laughter at him in the night.'
He took out a little pocket diary as he spoke, and with it an unopened letter.
'Oh, I had forgotten this,' he said. 'The English mail was delivered as I left the house this morning.'
'Do you put aside letters without reading them?' said Stella in surprise.
'Well, not as a rule,' he answered, smiling; 'but there were family letters that kept me occupied till I got here; and then, you know, at Lull there are things so much more interesting than letters from one's lawyer.'