“Ah yes, to be sure—your sister went there. But her health was perfect. I have seen her go out in the wildest weather, in days that made me shiver. She said that to see the sun always shining bored her. She liked a great deal of excitement and variety—don’t you think?” he added after a moment, in a tentative way.
“The sun does not shine always,” said Frances, piqued for the reputation of her home, as if this were an accusation. “We have grey days sometimes, and sometimes storms, beautiful storms, when the sea is all in foam.”
He shivered a little at the idea. “I have never yet found the perfect place in which there is nothing of all that,” he said. “Wherever I have been, there are cold days—even in Algiers, you know. No climate is perfect. I don’t go in much for society when I am at a health-place. It disturbs one’s thoughts and one’s temper, and keeps you from fixing your mind upon your cure, which you should always do. But I suppose you know everybody there?”
“There is—scarcely any one there,” she said, faltering, remembering at once that her father was not a person to whom to offer introductions.
“So much the better,” he said more cheerfully. “It is a thing I have often heard doctors say, that society was quite undesirable. It disturbs one’s mind. One can’t be so exact about hours. In short, it places health in a secondary place, which is fatal. I am always extremely rigid on that point. Health—must go before all. Now, dear Miss Waring, to details, if you please.” He took out a little note-book, bound in russia, and drew forth a jewelled pencil-case. “The hotels first, I beg; and then the other particulars can be filled in. We can put them under different heads: (1) Shelter; (2) Exposure; (3) Size and convenience of apartments; (4) Nearness to church, beach, &c. I hope you don’t think I am asking too much?”
“I am so glad to see that you have not given him up because of Con,” said one of Lady Markham’s visitors, talking very earnestly over the tea-table, with a little nod and gesture to indicate of whom she was speaking. “He must be very fond of you, to keep coming; or he must have some hope.”
“I think he is rather fond of me, poor Claude!” Lady Markham replied without looking round. “I am one of the oldest friends he has.”
“But Constance, you know, gave him a terrible snub. I should not have wondered if he had never entered the house again.”
“He enters the house almost every day, and will continue to do so, I hope. Poor boy, he cannot afford to throw away his friends.”
“Then that is almost the only luxury he can’t afford.”