"Everybody should make a pilgrimage in spring: it's the correct thing to do. Imagine starting on an April morning, through new roads, among singing birds and cowslips and green new leaves, and stopping at little inns for the night—lovely, Jean."
Jean gave a great sigh.
"Lovely," she echoed. Lovely, indeed, to be away from housekeeping and poor people and known paths for a little, and into leafy Warwick lanes and the rich English country which she had never seen.
"And then," Pamela went on, "you would come back appreciating Priorsford more than you have ever done. You would come back to Tweed and Peel Tower and the Hopetoun Woods with a new understanding. There's nothing so makes you appreciate your home as leaving it…. Bother! That's the bell. Visitors!"
It was only one visitor—Lewis Elliot.
"Cousin Lewis!" cried Jean. "Where in the world have you been? Three whole months since you went away and never a word from you. You didn't even write to Mrs. Hope."
"No," said Lewis; "I was rather busy." He greeted Pamela and sat down.
"Were you so very busy that you couldn't write so much as a post card?
And I don't believe you know that I'm an heiress?"
"Yes; I heard that, but only the other day. It was a most unexpected windfall. I was delighted to hear about it." Jean looked at him and wondered if he were well. His long holiday did not seem to have improved his spirits; he was more absent-minded than usual and disappointingly uninterested.
"I didn't know you were back in Priorsford," he said, addressing Pamela, "till I met your brother in London. I called on you just now, and Miss Bathgate sent me over here."