He did not pause to analyze the sentiment of slight annoyance which clouded his usual good humour; but Dr. Blundell divined it, with the quickness of an ultra-sensitive nature. He showed no signs that he had done so.
"It was you I came to see," he said, shaking hands with John. "I heard—you know how quickly news spreads here—that you had arrived. I hoped you might spare me a few moments for a little conversation."
"Certainly," said John. "Will you come in, or shall we take a turn?"
"You will be glad of a breath of fresh air after your journey," said the doctor, and he led the way across the south terrace, to a sheltered corner of the level plateau upon which the house was built, which was known as the fountain garden.
It was rather a deserted garden, thickly surrounded and overgrown by shrubs. Through the immense spreading Portuguese laurels which sheltered it from the east, little or no sunshine found its way to the grey, moss-grown basin and the stone figures supporting it; over which a thin stream of water continually flowed with a melancholy rhythm, in perpetual twilight.
A giant ivy grew rankly and thickly about the stone buttresses of this eastern corner of the house, and around a great mullioned window which overlooked the fountain garden, and which was the window of Lady Mary's bedroom.
"These shrubberies want thinning," said John, looking round him rather disgustedly. "This place is reeking with damp. I should like to cut down some of these poisonous laurels, and let in the air and the sunshine, and open out the view of the Brawnton hills."
"And why don't you?" said the doctor, with such energy in his tone that John stopped short in his pacing of the gravel walk, and looked at him.
The two men were almost as unlike in appearance as in character.
The doctor was nervous, irritable, and intense in manner; with deep-set, piercing eyes that glowed like hot coal when he was moved or excited. A tall, gaunt man, lined and wrinkled beyond his years; careless of appearance, so far as his shabby clothes were concerned, yet careful of detail, as was proven by spotless linen and well-preserved, delicate hands.