"Why, that's just splendid of you both," he said; "and as for coming to dinner, I shall be delighted. We Scientists are often told we are inconsistent, but we are not quite so bad as to mind coming to a house where a few poor souls think they are ill. So, _au revoir_, Lady Maud, and many thanks." * * * * * Maud was a girl of great singleness of purpose, and generally, when she was out for a day's fishing, the number of moments in which she thought about things unconnected in any way with fishing scarcely made any total at all, while any other subject that was present in her mind was there only in a very dim and distant fashion. But to-day, during the hour's fishing which she indulged in between Mr. Cochrane's departure and lunch, her thoughts persistently strayed from fishing, and when eventually she made herself a windless seat in the heather, overlooking the pool which she had just fished, even the brace of silvery sea-trout she had already caught, and the prospective brace or two that she promised herself before evening, occupied but a very small part of her meditations. Christian Science! She had indeed a "touch of derision" for that philosophy and its philosophers, though it was not worth while even to deride it. Nor was her derision founded on ignorance only, for last year Alice Yardly, a friend of hers, had joined the Church, and that had seemed to Maud a most suitable thing. For she had always thought that Alice, though a dear, was a fool, and now she knew it. Certainly, however, Mrs. Yardly did not in the least resemble Mr. Cochrane either in the matter of folly, because it was clearly impossible to think of him as a fool, or in the matter of proselytising, for Mrs. Yardly used to proselytise (with almost touching ill-success) by the hour, pouring out a perfect torrent of optimistic gabble about the nonexistence of pain and sickness, and be prostrated the moment afterwards by one of those nervous headaches to which she was subject. She would boldly, trying to nail a smile to her face, label this a "false claim" (though it was a pedantically accurate imitation of the real thing), and "demonstrate" over it, which, being interpreted, meant that she assured herself two or three million times that she could not have a nervous headache, since there was no nervous headache in Divine Love, and nothing existed except Divine Love. After that she would go to bed, and wake up next morning without any headache, and be delighted with the success of the demonstration that had banished it.