A giant ivy grew rankly and thickly about the stone buttresses of this eastern corner of the house, and around a great mullioned window which overlooked the fountain garden, and which was the window of Lady Mary’s bedroom.

“These shrubberies want thinning,” said John, looking round him rather disgustedly.  “This place is reeking with damp.  I should like to cut down some of these poisonous laurels, and let in the air and the sunshine, and open out the view of the Brawnton hills.”

“And why don’t you?” said the doctor, with such energy in his tone that John stopped short in his pacing of the gravel walk, and looked at him.

The two men were almost as unlike in appearance as in character.

The doctor was nervous, irritable, and intense in manner; with deep-set, piercing eyes that glowed like hot coal when he was moved or excited.  A tall, gaunt man, lined and wrinkled beyond his years; careless of appearance, so far as his shabby clothes were concerned, yet careful of detail, as was proven by spotless linen and well-preserved, delicate hands.

He was indifferent utterly to the opinion of others, to his own worldly advancement, or to any outer consideration, when in pursuit of the profession he loved; and he knew no other interest in life, save one.  He had the face of a fanatic or an enthusiast; but also of a man whose understanding had been so cultivated as to temper enthusiasm with judgment.

He had missed success, and was neither resigned to his disappointment, nor embittered by it.

The gaze of those dark eyes was seldom introspective; rather, as it seemed, did they look out eagerly, sadly, pitifully at the pain and sorrow of the world; a pain he toiled manfully to lessen, so far as his own infinitesimal corner of the universe was concerned.

John Crewys, on the other hand, was, to the most casual observer, a successful man; a man whose personality would never be overlooked.

There was a more telling force in his composure than in the doctor’s nervous energy.  His clear eyes, his bright, yet steady glance, inspired confidence.

The doctor might have been taken for a poet, but John looked like a philosopher.

He was also, as obviously, in appearance, a man of the world, and a Londoner, as the doctor was evidently a countryman, and a hermit.  His advantages over the doctor included his voice, which was as deep and musical as the tones of his companion were harsh.

The manner, no less than the matter of John’s speech, had early brought him distinction.

Nature, rather than cultivation, had bestowed on him the faculty of conveying the impression he wished to convey, in tones that charm; and held his auditors, and penetrated ears dulled and fatigued by monotony and indistinctness.

The more impassioned his pleading, the more utterly he held his own emotion in check; the more biting his subtly chosen words, the more courteous his manner; now deadly earnest, now humorously scornful, now graciously argumentative, but always skilfully and designedly convincing.