would scarcely have liked it. The hanging committee must have accepted it in a moment of strangely lucid liberality. By which, Mrs. Clarendon, I don’t mean to reflect upon your taste. I don’t like the picture myself, but it has great technical merits.”
“Is he young, like yourself?”
“Like myself?” Kingcote repeated, as if struck by the expression.
“Certainly. Are you not young?”
“I suppose so,” said the other, smiling rather grimly. “At all events, I am not thirty in years. But it sounded curious to hear the word applied to myself.”
Isabel laughed, opening and closing the fan. “But Gabriel is a fine fellow,” Kingcote exclaimed. “I wish I possessed a tenth part of his energy. There he works, day after day and week after week, no break, no failing of force or purpose, no holiday even—says he hasn’t time to take one. He will make his way, of course; such a man is bound to. Resolutely he has put away from himself every temptation to idleness. He sees no friends, he cares for no amusement. His power of working is glorious.”
“He is not, of course, married?”
Kingcote shook his head.
“That singleness of purpose—how splendid it is! He and I are opposite poles. I do not know what it is to have the same mind for two days together. My enthusiasm of to-day will be my disgust of to-morrow. I am always seeking, and never finding; I haven’t the force to pursue a search to the end. My moods are tyrannous; my moods make my whole life. Others have intellect; I have only temperament.”
There was no excitement in his way of uttering these confessions, but he began reflectively and ended in a grave bitterness.
“I think I know something of that,” Isabel said in return. “I, too, am much subject to moods.”
“But they do not affect the even tenor of your life,” said Kingcote. “They do not drive you to take one day an irrevocable step which you will repent the next. They have not made your life a failure.”
“Have they done so in your case?” Isabel asked, with a look of serious sympathy. “Pray remember your admission that you have not yet thirty years.”
“The tale of my years is of small account. I shall not change. I know myself, and I know my future.”
“That you cannot. And, from what you have told me, I think your present mode of life most unfortunate, most ill-chosen.”
There was a shadow at the window, and Ada re-entered the room.
“Won’t you let us see the sketch that was spoken of?” asked Mrs. Clarendon, turning to her.
“I don’t know where to find it at present,” Ada replied, moving to a seat in a remote part of the room.
“Do you think of living in that cottage through the winter?” Isabel asked of Kingcote, when there had been silence for a moment.
“Probably through many winters.”
“You remember that there is a considerable difference between our climate at present and what it will be in a couple of months or less.”
“I shall lay in a stock of fuel. And it will interest me. I have never spent a winter in the country; I want to study the effects.”
“The effects, I fear,” said Isabel, smiling, “are more likely to be of interest to our good friend Doctor Grayling.”
“Or even to the respectable undertaker, whose shop is in the High Street?” added Kingcote, with a laugh. “It doesn’t greatly matter.”
He rose and walked to the window.
“Do you remain here through the winter?” he asked.
“I believe so; though I cannot say with certainty. I like to be here for the meets.”
“The meets?”
“The hunting, you know.”
“Ah, you hunt?”
“Mr. Kingcote is shocked, Ada. He thinks that at my age I should have abandoned all such vanities.”
“Or perhaps wonders more,” remarked the girl, “that you ever indulged in them.”
Kingcote looked from one to the other, but kept silence.
“Oh, but we have altogether forgotten Sir Thomas!” Isabel exclaimed. “Where is he? Do read us something, Mr. Kingcote.”
Kingcote hesitated.
“There are many passages marked in the book,” he said. “Will you let me leave it with you, that you may glance through it? Perhaps it is better suited for reading to oneself.”
“Very well; but I will do more than glance. I once knew what it was even to study, Mr. Kingcote, though you will have a difficulty in believing it.”
“The idea is not so incongruous,” he said, half seriously.
“Though passably so. You are not going?”
“I will, if you please.”
A heaviness seemed to have fallen upon him during the last few minutes; a smile was summoned only with difficulty, and his eyes had a weary look.
“But now that we know each other by more than hearsay,” said Isabel, “you will come and see us again?”
“Yourself and Miss Warren, gladly; but if I am remiss in visiting you will not misunderstand the reason that keeps me away?”
“It shall be as you wish. Ada and I will let you know when we are alone.”
Kingcote made his way back to Wood End.
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