‘Yes. You know the place, it seems. But that’s hardly strange, since you lived so long at Seacomb. Did you know the Trevanards?’
‘No, I only knew the farm from having it pointed out to me once when a friend gave me a drive across the moor in his dog-cart. A queer, out-of-the-way place. What could have taken you there?’
‘It was something in the way of an adventure,’ replied Maurice, and then proceeded to relate his experience on that midsummer afternoon among the Cornish hills.
He touched lightly upon his visit to Penwyn Manor House, knowing that this might be a painful subject for Justina. But she showed a warm interest in his story.
‘You saw his house,’ she said, ‘the old Manor House he told me about that night at Eborsham. Oh, how like the memory of a dream it seems when I think of it! I should like so much to see that place.’
‘You shall see it some day, Justina, if—if you will let me show it you,’ said Maurice, stumbling a little over the last part of the sentence. ‘It is strange that you should be twice associated with that remote corner of the land, once in your birth, a second time in poor James Penwyn’s devotion to you.’
‘It is very strange, sir,’ said the comedian, solemnly, and then with his grand Shakespearean manner continued,—
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”’
‘It was at Borcel End I heard the name of Justina,’ said Maurice, going back to the subject most interesting to him. ‘There is an old picture there, a portrait of the present proprietor’s grandmother, whose name was Justina.’