She seemed to consider the idea quite seriously.

“Well?” she pursued.  “Have you any fault to find with my precipice?”

“I have.  It ought to be railed in.  It is dangerous.  What a temptation this cliff must be to anyone who has an enemy to dispose of!  It would be so simple,” he added, laughing.

“That advantage has never struck me before. . . .”

These and other things passed through Mr. Heard’s mind as he lay in bed that evening.  He came to the conclusion that he could not quite make his cousin out.  Had something upset her?  And what did she mean by that sudden conundrum: 

“Do you know anything, Tommy, about our laws of illegitimacy?”

“Nothing,” he had replied, “except that they are a disgrace to a civilized country.  Everybody knows that.”

She seemed to be disappointed.  Perhaps she mistrusted him.  The thought gave him a little pain.  He had done nothing to merit mistrust.  He was frank and open himself; he liked others to be the same.

What was the use of thinking about it?  He knew tantalizingly little about his cousin—­nothing but scraps of information gathered from his mother’s letters to him.  He would call again in a day or two and make some definite arrangements about their journey to England.  Perhaps he had talked more dully than usual. . . .  Or could it be the south wind?

Neither of these explanations was wholly convincing.

CHAPTER XV

Nothing was happening.  For the first time since many years, the Nepenthe season threatened to be a failure.  It was the dullest spring on record.  And yet there was a quality in that heavy atmosphere which seemed to threaten mischief.  Everybody agreed that it had never been quite so bad as this.  Meanwhile, people yawned.  They were bored stiff.  As a source of gossip, those two burglaries were a negligible quantity.  So was the little accident which had just happened to Mr. Keith, who ruefully declared he had done it on purpose, in order to liven things up.  No one was likely to be taken in by this kind of talk, because the accident was of an inglorious and even ludicrous kind.

Being very short-sighted he had managed to stumble backwards, somehow or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall.  Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot.  Mr. Keith’s trousers were rather badly scalded.  He was sensitive on that point.  He suffered a good deal.  People came to express their sympathy.  The pain made him more tedious, long-winded and exhortatory than usual.  At that particular moment Denis was being victimized.  He had thoughtlessly called to express his sympathy, to see those celebrated cannas, and because he could not bear to be alone with his thoughts just then.

“Suffering!” exclaimed Mr. Keith.  “That is what you young poets want.  At present you are too unperplexed and glib.  Suffering!  It would enlarge your repertoire; it would make you more human, individual, and truthful.  What is the unforgivable sin in poetry?  Lack of candour.  How shall there be candour if the poet lacks worldly experience?  Suffering!  That is what you people want.  It would make men of you.”