"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Stewart, "but they keep it up nevertheless. Of course, it's only when one gets away from it that one really gets the most entertaining focus on that sort of a thing. I'm sure," she sighed, "I don't seem to belong to those ranks at all, now." She shivered a little. The sun was setting, and a chill breeze blowing off the sea. "I'm afraid we must go," she said, rising, "but you must be sure and come to see us." She gave Lancaster a small card, and then, with smiles and bows, and rustling of skirts, they were gone.
In the weeks that followed Lancaster availed himself of the privilege accorded in Mrs. Stewart's invitation as often as possible. The three were together almost daily, if only for a few moments. Lancaster was busily employed, the while, in fixing in black-and-white some of the types and features that prevailed in this fashionable corner of Fife. The London and Paris journals soon gave evidences of his industry. Fortunately, but few of these papers found their way to St. Andrews, and Lancaster's love of incognito was not disturbed. Sometimes the artist would disappear for days; a fishing-boat would be his hope for the time, and he would drink in the free winds of the sea, and the passing joy of that toilsome life of the fishermen. The winds and the freshness of the life were like a tonic to him, but he knew that it would presently pall and he would give way to the fever for the metropolitan whirlpool.
Occasionally Miss Leigh preferred to remain in her apartments, leaving Mrs. Stewart to stroll along the links alone with the young artist. "Do you know," remarked Mrs. Stewart, on one such occasion, "that my cousin's tremendously fond of you?"
Lancaster looked up in surprise: Then he gave a short laugh. "She's tremendously mistaken," he said, "I'm not the sort that anyone should be fond of—now." He looked out over the sea. "There goes a steamer. I suppose it's the Aberdeen boat." He watched it wistfully.
"She thinks," continued Mrs. Stewart, heedless of his abstraction, "that you are a young man much to be envied. Already you have a name that is known far and wide, and all life is yet before you. She—"
He interrupted, bitterly: "Life is all behind me, you should say. All, all! I have tried everything, the good and the evil. The one broke my belief in all things; the other gives me the belief that the only thing to do is to laugh. Strange! I heard that phrase first in your drawing-room, Mrs. Stewart! Suppose we sit down. These rocks are fashioned delightfully for easy chairs."
The sun was burnishing the water with a lustre of copper. The sea-gulls moaned as they circled about hungrily. The breakers hissed sullenly below them.
"My philosophy," he went on, after he had seen that Mrs. Stewart was comfortably seated, "is very simple, now. Laugh! That is the text of it."
She mused in silence. "You used to be so different," she murmured, presently. "You were, not so long ago, at the other extreme. You thought everything was solemn, awful, important, that there were majestic duties in life, splendid obligations, and splendid things to live for. Now,—you say it is all a jest, and the only thing to do is to laugh. I think you have had too much curiosity."
"Perhaps. Curiosity is a guide that takes us into a labyrinth and leaves us there. But why," he shrugged his shoulders impatiently, "why must we be forever talking of this hapless personage, me? Suppose we talk, instead, of you?"