Half-way down he met Ferrier, ascending from the tomb. Sir James turned, and they strolled back together. The Umbrian landscape girdling the superb town showed itself unveiled. Every gash on the torn white sides of the eastern Apennines, every tint of purple or porcelain-blue on the nearer hills, every plane of the smiling valley as it wound southward, lay bathed in a broad and searching light which yet was a light of beauty--of infinite illusion.
"I must say I have enjoyed my life," said Ferrier, abruptly, as they paused to look back, "though I don't put it altogether in the first class!"
Sir James raised his eyebrows--smiled--and did not immediately reply.
"Chide, old fellow," Ferrier resumed, turning to him, "before I left England I signed my will. Do you object that I have named you one of the two executors?"
Sir James gave him a cordial glance.
"All right, I'll do my best--if need arises. I suppose, Johnnie, you're a rich man?"
The name "Johnnie," very rarely heard between them, went back to early days at the Bar, when Ferrier was for a time in the same chambers with the young Irishman who, within three years of being called, was making a large income; whereas Ferrier had very soon convinced himself that the Bar was not for him, nor he for the Bar, and being a man of means had "plumped" for politics.
"Yes, I'm not badly off," said Ferrier; "I'm almost the last of my family; and a lot of money has found its way to me first and last. It's been precious difficult to know what to do with it. If Oliver Marsham had stuck to that delightful girl I should have left it to him."
Sir James made a growling sound, more expressive than articulate.
"As it is," Ferrier resumed, "I have left half of it to my old Oxford college, and half to the University."