‘I used to be very fond of Switzerland,’ said Trevelyan, ’but I don’t care about it now.  My eye has lost all its taste.’

‘It isn’t the eye,’ said Glascock.

’Well; no.  The truth is that when one is absolutely unhappy one cannot revel in the imagination.  I don’t believe in the miseries of poets.’

‘I think myself,’ said Glascock, ’that a poet should have a good digestion.  By-the-bye, Mrs Trevelyan and her sister went down to Nuncombe Putney, in Devonshire.’

‘They did go there.’

‘Have they moved since?  A very pretty place is Nuncombe Putney.’

‘You have been there, then?’

Mr Glascock blushed again.  He was certainly an awkward man, saying things that he ought not to say, and telling secrets which ought not to have been told.  ‘Well yes.  I have been there as it happens.’

‘Just lately do you mean?’

Mr Glascock paused, hoping to find his way out of the scrape, but soon perceived that there was no way out.  He could not lie, even in an affair of love, and was altogether destitute of those honest subterfuges, subterfuges honest in such position of which a dozen would have been at once at the command of any woman, and with one of which, sufficient for the moment, most men would have been able to arm themselves.  ‘Indeed, yes,’ he said, almost stammering as he spoke.  ’It was lately since your wife went there.’  Trevelyan, though he had been told of the possibility of Mr Glascock’s courtship, felt himself almost aggrieved by this man’s intrusion on his wife’s retreat.  Had he not sent her there that she might be private; and what right had any one to invade such privacy?  ‘I suppose I had better tell the truth at once,’ said Mr Glascock.  ‘I went to see Miss Rowley.’

‘Oh, indeed.’

‘My secret will be safe with you, I know.’

‘I did not know that there was a secret,’ said Trevelyan.  ’I should have thought that they would have told me.’

’I don’t see that.  However, it doesn’t matter much.  I got nothing by my journey.  Are the ladies still at Nuncombe Putney?’

‘No, they have moved from there to London.’

‘Not back to Curzon Street?’

‘Oh dear, no.  There is no house in Curzon Street for them now.’  This was said in a tone so sad that it almost made Mr Glascock weep.  ’They are staying with an aunt of theirs out to the east of the city.’

‘At St. Diddulph’s?’

’Yes with Mr Outhouse, the clergyman there.  You can’t conceive what it is not to be able to see your own child; and yet, how can I take the boy from her?’

‘Of course not.  He’s only a baby.’

’And yet all this is brought on me solely by her obstinacy.  God knows, however, I don’t want to say a word against her.  People choose to say that I am to blame, and they may say so for me.  Nothing that any one may say can add anything to the weight that I have to bear.’  Then they walked to the top of the mountain in silence, and in due time were picked up by their proper shepherd and carried down to Susa at a pace that would give an English coachman a concussion of the brain.