'Still, you admit it. That's something gained. You always smile at
other people's confessions, and keep your own mind mysterious.'

'Mysterious? I always thought one of my faults was over-frankness.'

'That only shows how little we know ourselves.'

Harvey was reflecting on the incompleteness of his knowledge of Alma.
Intentionally or not, she appeared to him at this moment in a perfectly
new light; he could not have pictured her so simple of manner, so
direct, so placid. Trouble seemed to have given her a holiday, and at
the same time to have released her from self-consciousness.

'But you have never told us,' she went on, 'about your wanderings in
France this summer. English people don't go much to that part, do they?'

'No. I happened to read a book about it. It's the old fighting-ground
of French and English--interesting to any one pedantic enough to care
for such things.'

'But not to people born to be sheep-farmers. And you had a serious
illness.--Did Mr. Rolfe tell you, Mamma dear, that he nearly died at
some miserable roadside inn?'

Mrs. Frothingham looked startled, and declared she knew nothing of it.
Harvey, obliged to narrate, did so in the fewest possible words, and
dismissed the matter.

'I suppose you have had many such experiences,' said Alma. 'And when do
you start on your next travels?'

'I have nothing in view. I half thought of going for the winter to a
place in North Wales--Carnarvonshire, on the outer sea.'

The ladies begged for more information, and he related how, on a ramble
with a friend last spring (it was Basil Morton), he had come upon this
still little town between the mountains and the shore, amid a country
shining with yellow gorse, hills clothed with larch, heathery moorland,
ferny lanes, and wild heights where the wind roars on crag or cairn.

'No railway within seven miles. Just the place for a pedant to escape
to, and live there through the winter with his musty books.'

'But it must be equally delightful for people who are not pedants!'
exclaimed Alma.

'In spring or summer, no doubt, though even then the civilised person
would probably find it dull.'

'That's your favourite affectation again. I'm sure it's nothing but
affectation when you speak scornfully of civilised people.'

'Scornfully I hope I never do.'

'Really, Mamma,' said Alma, with a laugh, 'Mr. Rolfe is in his very
mildest humour today. We mustn't expect any reproofs for our good. He
will tell us pr