Her reply was hesitating: “I do not quite know; but I think some time. She likes the place; it seems to amuse her.” “And you--does it amuse you?” “It does not matter about me. I am madame’s servant; but, indeed, it does not amuse me particularly.” “Do you like the place?” The reply was somewhat hurried, and she glanced at me a little nervously. “Oh yes,” she said, “I like the place, but--” Here Roscoe appeared at the door and said, “Mrs. Falchion wishes to see Viking and Mr. Devlin’s mills, Marmion. She will go with us.” In a little time we were on our way to Viking. I walked with Mrs. Falchion, and Roscoe with Justine. I was aware of a new element in Mrs. Falchion’s manner. She seemed less powerfully attractive to me than in the old days, yet she certainly was more beautiful. It was hard to trace the new characteristic. But at last I thought I saw it in a decrease of that cold composure, that impassiveness, so fascinating in the past. In its place had come an allusive, restless something, to be found in words of troublesome vagueness, in variable moods, in an increased sensitiveness of mind and an undercurrent of emotional bitterness--she was emotional at last! She puzzled me greatly, for I saw two spirits in her: one pitiless as of old; the other human, anxious, not unlovely. At length we became silent, and walked so side by side for a time. Then, with that old delightful egotism and selfishness--delightful in its very daring--she said: “Well, amuse me!” “And is it still the end of your existence,” I rejoined--“to be amused?” “What is there else to do?” she replied with raillery. “Much. To amuse others, for instance; to regard human beings as something more than automata.” “Has Mr. Roscoe made you a preaching curate? I helped Amshar at the Tanks.” “One does not forget that. Yet you pushed Amshar with your foot.” “Did you expect me to kiss the black coward? Then, I nursed Mr. Roscoe in his illness.” “And before that?” “And before that I was born into the world, and grew to years of knowledge, and learned what fools we mortals be, and--and there--is that Mr. Devlin’s big sawmill?” We had suddenly emerged on a shelf of the mountainside, and were looking down into the Long Cloud Valley. It was a noble sight. Far to the north were foothills covered with the glorious Norfolk pine, rising in steppes till they seemed to touch white plateaus of snow, which again billowed to glacier fields whose austere bosoms man’s hand had never touched; and these suddenly lifted up huge, unapproachable shoulders, crowned with majestic peaks that took in their teeth the sun, the storm, and the whirlwinds of the north, never changing countenance from day to year and from year to age.