SOMEHOW or other Chester failed to charm. Neither of them could understand why. Perhaps the Stratford Hotel had given them a momentary surfeit of half-timber; perhaps the fact that the skies turned gray and substituted drizzle for sunshine had something to do with it; perhaps it was the extreme badness of the hotel to which ill-luck led them, a hotel that smelt of stale seed-cake and bad coffee and bad mutton-fat, and was furnished almost entirely with bentwood chairs and wicker tables; perhaps it was the added aggravation of seeing a river which might have been to them a second Medway, and seeing it quite impossible and miserably pitted with little rain-spots. Whatever the reason, even next morning's sunshine and the beauty of the old walls and the old walks failed to dispel the gloom. They bought rain-coats and umbrellas in a shop that had known ruffs and farthingales, paid their hotel bill, which was as large as the hotel was bad, and took the afternoon train to Caernarvon.
The glimpse of Conway Castle from the train cheered them a little. The sight of the sea did more—but still he felt a cloud between them, and still she felt more and more that he was aware of it. Charles sat between them, as before, and over that stout white back his eyes met hers.
"What is it?" he asked, suddenly. "Yesterday I thought it was the half-timber and the rain—this morning I thought it was yesterday, but it isn't. Something's happened that you haven't told me."
She turned her eyes from his and stroked the flappy white ears of Charles.
"Hasn't it?" he urged. "Ah, you will tell me, won't you? Was it something from the aunts?"
For there had been letters that morning, sent on from Warwick.
"No, the letters were all right. Everybody's furious except Aunt Alice, but she's the only one that matters."
"Then what is it?"
"It's almost gone," she said. "Oh, look at the rocks and the heather on that great hill."
"Then there was something," he said; "something you won't tell me."