'I never feel it anywhere,' answered Justina, frankly. 'Father hardly ever leaves off smoking.'
There was a weeping willow at the edge of the garden, a willow whose lower branches dipped into the river, and just beside the willow a bench where these two seated themselves, in the full glory of the moon. A much better place than the dusky summerhouse, which might peradventure be a harbour for frogs, snails, or spiders. They sat by the river's brim, and talked—talked as easily as if they had a thousand ideas in common, these two, who had never met until to-day, and whose lives lay so far apart.
They had youth and hope in common, and that bond was enough to unite them.
James asked Justina a good many questions about stage life, and was surprised to find the illusions of his boyhood vanish before stern truth.
'I thought it was such a jolly life, and the easiest in the world,' he said. 'I've often fancied I should like to be an actor. I think I could do it pretty well. I can imitate Buckstone, and Charles Mathews.'
'Pray don't think of it,' exclaimed Justina. 'You'd be tired to death in a year.'
'I dare say I should. I'm not much of a fellow for sticking to anything. I got "ploughed" a year ago at Oxford, and now I've been trying to read with Clissold walking through England and Wales, and putting up at all the quietest places we can find. Clissold is a first-rate coach, and it won't be his fault if I don't get my degree next time. How do you like him?'
'I don't know. I haven't thought about him, answered the girl, simply. This younger and fairer stranger had made her oblivious of Maurice Clissold, with his tall, strong frame, dark, penetrating eyes, and broad brow. Too manly a man altogether to be admired by a girl of seventeen.
'He is as good a fellow as ever breathed; a little bitter, perhaps; but most wholesome things are bitter,' said James. 'He has his crotchets. One is that I am to be a model master of Penwyn by and by, go into Parliament, marry an heiress, set up as a fine old English gentleman, in fact. Rather a wearisome métier, I should think. The worst of it is, he keeps it continually before my mind's eye, is always reminding me of how much I owe to Penwyn Manor and my race, and won't let me get much enjoyment out of youth's brief holiday. He's a good fellow, but I might love him better if I didn't respect him so much. He was a great favourite of my poor mother's. A romantic story, by the way. She was engaged to Maurice's father some years before she married mine. He was a captain in the East India Company's service, and fell fighting the niggers at Goojerat. Years afterwards, when my father was dead and gone, Clissold and I met at Eton. My mother burst into tears when she heard my schoolfellow's name, and asked me to bring him to see her. Of course I obeyed, and from that time to the day of her death my mother had a second son in Maurice. I think she loved him as well as she loved me.'