"Well," I said at last to break a long pause that followed his last
words, "what did you think about all that time you were alone?"

"I used to think always about two things," he said very solemnly. "One
was love. I used to think how splendid it would be if only there would
be some one to whom I could dedicate my devotion. I didn't care if I
got much in return or no, but they must be willing to have it ready
for me to devote myself altogether. I used to watch the ladies in our
town and select them, one after another. Of course they never knew and
they would only have laughed had they known. But I felt quite
desperate sometimes. I had so much in me to give to some one and the
years were all slipping by and it became, every day, more difficult.
There _was_ a girl ... something seemed to begin between us. She was
the daughter of one of the canons, dark-haired, and she used to wear a
lilac-coloured dress. She was very kind; once when we were walking
through the town I began to talk to her. I believe she understood,
because she was very, very young--only about eighteen--and hadn't
begun to laugh at me yet. She had a dimple in one cheek, very
charming--but some man from London came to stay at the Castle and she
was engaged to him. Then there were Katherine and Millie Trenchard, of
whom we were talking. Katherine never laughed at me; she was serious
and helped her mother about all the household things and the village
where they lived. Afterwards she ran away with a young man and was
married in London--very strange because she was so serious. There was
a great deal of talk about it at the time. Millie too was charming.
She laughed at me, of course, but she laughed at every one. At any
rate she was only cousinly to me; she would not have cared for my
devotion."

As he spoke I had a picture in my mind of poor Trenchard searching the
countryside for some one to whom he might be devoted, tongue-tied,
clumsy, stumbling and stuttering, a village Don Quixote with a stammer
and without a Dulcinea.

"They must have been difficult years," I said, and again cursed myself
for my banality.

"They were," he answered very gravely, "Very difficult."

"And your other thoughts?" I asked him.

"They were about death," he replied. "I had, from my very earliest
years, a great terror of death. You might think that my life was not
so pleasant that I should mind, very greatly, leaving it. But I was
always thinking--hoping that I should live