I went down to stay at Tredennis for a week in July.  I got to the house through the quiet sultry lanes about the middle of the afternoon, having started very early from town.  As I came up the little drive I could see through the trees an animated game of lawn-tennis proceeding on the lawn in front of the house, between two flannelled combatants.  At the sound of the wheels they broke off the game, and Edward came up to greet me.  He was now nearly nineteen, and had lost none of the beauty of his boyhood; a small brown moustache which fringed his upper lip being, to my eyes, almost the only sign of his advancing years.  He introduced me to his friend, a young Eton man, possessed of that frank nonchalance which it is the privilege of that institution to bestow.  I inquired where Arthur was.  Edward told me that he had gone down to the stream for a stroll.  “We’ll go down and find him,” he said, putting his arm in mine, with that same demonstrativeness that had always characterized him, and that won people to him so quickly.

We crossed one or two adjacent fields which sloped down to the stream, conspicuous by its fringe of alder and hazel; and after crossing by a gravel-pit, we came on a level reach of it, all stifled with high water-plants, figwort, and loosestrife, and willow-herb, and great sprawling docks, till, down by a little runnel where it took a sudden turn round a shoal of gravel, we came upon the faint fragrance of a cigarette; then Flora ran forward to meet us; and, on turning the corner, we found a great long figure lying on the bank, with hat half pulled over his eyes, gazing dreamily up into the shifting willow leaves and the blue above.

Our voices, which had been drowned by the sound of the running water, aroused him, and he sat up, and, on seeing me, got slowly to his feet with a delightful smile of welcome on his face.  “How are you, my dear man?” he said.  “I didn’t expect you so early, or I should have been at home to meet you—­in fact, I should have driven down to Truro, only I am not quite the thing to-day.”

I looked rather anxiously at him, to see how he appeared to be, and was much struck with the change in him.  There had crept into his face what has been called a look of “doom.”  The Stuarts are said to have had it.  I can not describe it in any other way.  It was that of a man waiting for something, bravely and calmly, but still with a certain sort of apprehension.  He looked very solemn and grave when he was not speaking, and he was apt to get a kind of brooding look, which did not disperse till one spoke to him.  He was thinner, too, and paler, though the old lock of hair still dangled over his forehead, and his eyes had the old affectionate look.

He was playful and humorous in a quiet way.  I have forgotten what we talked about—­we discussed people and things vaguely; I can only remember one little remark he made which struck me as being highly characteristic.  I had said, in reply to some question as to one of our friends, “Oh, he’s perfectly crazy.”  “Yes,” said Arthur, mildly:  “he has certainly got some curious mannerisms.”