"You look as if you were not very strong," hazarded Dopsy, sympathetically. "Are you not afraid of a long walk?"
"Not at all; I never feel better than when walking on these hills," answered Angus. "It is almost my native air, you see. I came here to get a stock of rude health before I go to winter in the South."
"And you are really going to be abroad all the winter?" sighed Dopsy, as if she would have said, "How shall I bear my life in your absence."
"Yes, it is five years since I spent a winter in England. I hold my life on that condition. I am never to know the luxury of a London fog, or see a Drury Lane pantomime, or skate upon the Serpentine. A case of real distress, is it not?"
"Very sad—for your friends," said Dopsy; "but I can quite imagine that you love the sunny South. How I long to see the Mediterranean—the mountains—the pine-trees—the border-land of Italy."
"No doubt you will go there some day—and be disappointed. People generally are when they indulge in day-dreams about a place."
"My dreams will always be dreams," answered Dopsy, with a profound sigh: "we are not rich enough to travel."
Christabel walked on in front with Jessie and the dogs. Mr. Hamleigh was longing to be by her side—to talk as they had talked of old—of a thousand things which could be safely discussed without any personal feeling. They had so many sympathies, so many ideas in common. All the world of sense and sentiment was theirs wherein to range at will. But Dopsy and Mopsy stuck to him like burs; plying him with idle questions, and stereotyped remarks, looking at him with languishing eyes.
He was too much a gentleman, had too much good feeling to be rude to them—but he was bored excessively.
They went by the cliffs—a wild grand walk. The wide Atlantic spread its dull leaden-coloured waves before them under the grey sky—touched with none of those translucent azures and carmines which so often beautify that western sea. They crossed a bit of hillocky common, and then went down to look at a slate quarry under the cliff—a scene of uncanny grandeur—grey and wild and desolate.