"Then why go back to it?" she asked. "But all the people in London can't be—bad and false," she added, as if she were considering his sweeping condemnation.
"Oh, not all," he said. "I've been unfortunate in my acquaintances, perhaps, as Voltaire said."
He looked across the moor again absently. Her question, "Then why go back to it?" haunted him. It was absurd to imagine that he could remain at Shorne Mills. The quiet life had been pleasant, he had felt better in health here than he had done for years; but—well, a man who has spent so many years in the midst of the whirl of life is very much like the old prisoner of the Bastille who, when he was released by the revolutionary mob, implored to be taken back again. One gets used to the din and clamor of society as one gets used to the solemn quiet of a prison. Besides, he was, or had been, a prominent figure in the gallantry show, and he seemed to belong to it.
"One isn't always one's own master," he said, after a pause.
"Are not you?" she said, a little shyly. "You seem so—so free to do just what you please."
He laughed rather grimly.
"Do you know what I should do if I were as free as I seem, Miss Nell?" he asked. "I should take one of these farms"—he nodded to a rural homestead, one of the smallest and simplest, which stood on the edge of the moor—"and spend the rest of my life making clotted cream and driving cows and pigs to market."
She laughed.
"I can scarcely imagine you doing that," she said.