“Not quite. I shall not decide until a few days before starting, I expect. But how is everybody at The Ghan House? Does his lordship of the rectory hate me as cordially as ever? I see Paddy has not yet managed to get herself transported to a better clime.” While Eileen replied to his questions, her slender white hands played a little nervously with a flower, and her deep eyes fluttered between the distant mountains and her companion’s face. She felt he was studying her, and knew there was admiration in his eyes, and her heart felt foolishly glad. “Have we been away three whole years?” he said presently. “How strange! It seems like three months now I am back. Shall I find everyone as unchanged as you, Eileen?” “I am three years older,” she said, with a little smile. “Yes, but there are some people to whom the years make very little difference. I think you are one of them.” “Yet I feel different.” “How?” looking at her keenly. “It wouldn’t be easy to describe. It is just different, that’s all,” and she gazed a little wistfully toward the mountains. “I expect you are getting too thoughtful,” he said. “You ought to go away somewhere, and see something of the world outside these mountains.” “I am very fond of the mountains,” she told him simply. “I don’t want to go away. I do not think any place could be as lovely as this.” “That is where you are wrong. I acknowledge the scenery among these mountains is very beautiful, but there are heaps of equally and indeed more beautiful places in the world. “The only thing is one gets tired,” relapsing into a languid manner, that Eileen could not but see had gained upon him during his absence. “I’d give something not to have seen, nor heard, nor learned, more than you have. To have it all before me, instead of all behind.” “But surely,”—leaning forward with ill-concealed eagerness—“the future is just brimming over with interest and possibilities for you.” “Why for me particularly?” “I was thinking of your brains, and your money, and your position—why you have everything to make life interesting.” He shrugged his shoulders, and the expression on his thin cynical mouth was not pleasant. “Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s too much bother altogether. I’ve seen behind the scenes too much to care; it’s all rather rotten at the core, you know—everything is.” Eileen looked pained, and gazed away to her beloved mountains. “I am sorry you feel like that,” she said simply; “it is all so beautiful to me.” “Just at present perhaps—but by and by—” “I hope it will be, by and by also. Anyhow, I shall still have my mountains.” “And after all they’re nothing in the world but indentations and corrosions on the crust of a planet, that is one in millions.” There was a pause, then she asked slowly: “Is that how you look upon human beings?”