"Are you touring?"
"No, I am staying with the Vicar of Trevena. He is an old friend of my father's: they were college chums; and Mr. Carlyon is always kind to me."
Mr. Carlyon was a new vicar, who had come to Trevena within the last two years.
"Shall you stay long?" asked Christabel, in tones which had a curiously flat sound, as of a voice produced by mechanism.
"I think not. It is a delicious place to stay at, but——"
"A little of it goes a long way," said Jessie.
"You have not quite anticipated my sentiments, Miss Bridgeman. I was going to say that unfortunately for me I have engagements in London which will prevent my staying here much longer."
"You are not looking over robust," said Jessie, touched with pity by the sad forecast which she saw in his faded eyes, his hollow cheeks, faintly tinged with hectic bloom. "I'm afraid the Caucasus was rather too severe a training for you."
"A little harder than the ordeal to which you submitted my locomotive powers some years ago," answered Angus, smiling; "but how can a man spend the strength of his manhood better than in beholding the wonders of creation? It is the best preparation for those still grander scenes which one faintly hopes to see by-and-by among the stars. According to the Platonic theory a man must train himself for immortality. He who goes straight from earthly feasts and junkettings will get a bad time in the under world, or may have to work out his purgation in some debased brute form."
"Poor fellow," thought Jessie, with a sigh, "I suppose that kind of feeling is his nearest approach to religion."