Caliphronas shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps so, sir. For myself, I do not care about it.”
“Curious creature,” murmured Maurice reflectively, as he followed the Rector and his guest into the garden. “I wonder why he looks at me so keenly, and what he is doing down here. Humph! I would like to find out your little game, my friend.”
Ten years of fighting with the world had turned Maurice from a frank, open-hearted fellow into a cold, suspicious man, and he always doubted the motives of every one. This is a disagreeable way of looking at things, but in many cases it is a very necessary one, owing to the double lives which most people seem nowadays to live. Social intercourse, whether for pleasure or business, is no longer as simple as it used to be in the old days, and our complex civilization has introduced into every action we perform that element of distrust which is at once disagreeable and necessary. Maurice knew nothing about Caliphronas, and had he met him in London would doubtless have accepted him for what he appeared to be—a foreign nobleman on his travels; but for this man to visit a quiet village like Roylands was peculiar, and there must be some motive for his doing so.
“I’ll ask him how he likes England, and lead up to his unexpected arrival here,” thought Maurice, as he walked along smoking his cigarette. “He seems sharp, but I think I’m able to distinguish between the real and the false.”
Caliphronas was loud in his expressions of admiration for the Rector’s roses, and his delight seemed genuine enough even to Maurice, who stood listening to his raptures with a grim smile, as if he would like to cast over this bright being the shadow of his own melancholy nature.
“I have a perfect passion for flowers,” said the Count, with a gay smile, as he placed a red bud in his coat, “and roses are my favorites. Were they not the flowers of pleasure in classical times? did they not wreathe the brows of revellers at festivals?—the flowers of love and of silence!”
“I am pleased you like flowers,” observed the Rector, looking at the joyous figure before him, which was bathed in sunshine; “’tis an innocent pleasure.”
“I love all that is of Nature,” cried Caliphronas, throwing himself on the smooth sward; “Nature is my mother—my true mother. Yes, I am a man born of woman, but such maternity does not appeal to me. Nature is at once my mother, my nurse, my goddess.”
“You were born in Ithaca,” said Maurice quietly.