“Your well in the court!” said the sentimental Claude, with the look of a poet who has just been told that his dearest friend is killed by an accident,--“with everything percolating into it! That is terrible indeed. But,” he said, after a pause, an ethereal sense of consolation stealing over his fine features--“there are exceptions, they say, to every rule; and sometimes, with fine health such as you have, bad sanitary conditions do not seem to tell--_when there has been no stirring-up_. I believe that is at the root of the whole question. People can go on, on the old system, so long as there is no stirring-up; but when once a beginning has been made, it must be complete, or it is fatal.” He said this with animation much greater than he had shown as yet; then dropping into his habitual pathos: “If I come in for tea to-morrow--Lady Markham allows me to do it, when I can, when the weather is fit for going out--will you be so very kind as to give me half an hour, Miss Waring, for a few particulars? I will take them down from your lips--it is so much the most satisfactory way; and perhaps you would add to your kindness by just thinking it over beforehand--if there is anything I ought to know.” “But I am going out to-morrow, Mr Ramsay.” “Then after to-morrow,” he said; and rising with a bow full of tender deference, went up to Lady Markham to bid her good-night. “I have been having a most interesting conversation with Miss Waring. She has given me so many _renseignements_,” he said. “She permits me to come after to-morrow for further particulars. Dear Lady Markham, good-night and _à revoir_.” “What was Claude saying to you, Frances?” Lady Markham asked with a little anxiety, when everybody save Markham was gone, and they were alone. “He asked me about Bordighera, mamma.” “Poor dear boy! About Con, and what she had said of him? He has a faithful heart, though people think him a little too much taken up with himself.” “He did not say anything about Constance. He asked about the climate and the drains--what are drains?--and if the water was good, and what hotel I could recommend.” Lady Markham laughed and coloured slightly, and tapped Frances on the cheek. “You are a little satirical----! Dear Claude! he is very anxious about his health. But don’t you see,” she added, “that was all a covert way of finding out about Con? He wants to go after her; but he does not want to let everybody in the world see that he has gone after a girl who would not have him. I have a great deal of sympathy with him, for my part.”