His voice had a hollow sound, unlike his natural voice.
The earl looked at him remembering the bright laughing lad he had once been, and said: 'Why not try a month of Madeira? You have only to step on board the boat.'
'I don't want to lose a month of my friend,' said Beauchamp.
'Take your friend with you. After these fevers our Winters are bad.'
'I've been idle too long.'
'But, Captain Beauchamp,' said Jenny, 'you proposed to do nothing but read for a couple of years.'
'Ay, there's the voyage!' sighed he, with a sailor-invalid's vision of sunny seas dancing in the far sky.
'You must persuade Dr. Shrapnel to come; and he will not come unless you come too, and you won't go anywhere but to the Alps!' She bent her eyes on the floor. Beauchamp remembered what had brought her home from the Alps. He cast a cold look on his uncle talking with Cecilia: granite, as he thought. And the reflux of that slight feeling of despair seemed to tear down with it in wreckage every effort he had made in life, and cry failure on him. Yet he was hoping that he had not been created for failure.
He touched his uncle's hand indifferently: 'My love to the countess: let me hear of her, sir, if you please.'
'You shall,' said the earl. 'But, off to Madeira, and up Teneriffe: sail the Azores. I'll hire you a good-sized schooner.'