Her voice had changed so with the unexpected conclusion that I looked up at her sharply. The roguery was now only flickering about her face, which was almost sad.
“Memento mori! Why, what have you to do with that?”
“No more, perhaps, than the rest of the world. I might not have thought of it but for this.” She tapped the sarcophagus. “But life is uncertain enough for us all, and—perhaps it was a fancy as I lay there to imagine myself in the place of him or her who occupied it hundreds, or, as my father will tell me, thousands of years ago; and then to think of a day that is coming.”
I had never before heard a girl talk like that, and no doubt my face showed it.
“Well,” she continued, changing her tone, “that’s enough of the doleful for one day. Now tell me; are you staying here? At the inn? No?”
“No. With friends. Are you?”
“We, my father and I, are staying at Eisenhalm, about four miles off. We came over here to hammer at the landslip.”
“Oh!” I confess I was fairly puzzled by this girl, and could not make up my mind whether to be suspicious of her or not. I thought I would wait and see what the father was like.
“Your father is scientific; a geologist?”
“Rather. I have been brought up on fossils and pliocene fragments. You can hardly wonder at my taking naturally to this stone coffin as a summer-house,” she said wistfully. “Science is very interesting and absorbing to a man who takes to it, but it is a horrible bore for his family. I am very, very dull, and my feelings towards this landslip are not fit to be expressed. Of course you have heard of my father, Professor Seemarsh?”