And, as if in order to put her words into practice, she looked at him there and then.  He was gazing out of the window, leaning gracefully and yet feebly against the shutter, with the full glory of the forenoon sun upon his sharp-cut profile and rich chestnut locks; and after all, having looked at him once, she could not help looking at him again.  He was certainly a most gentleman-like man, elegant from head to foot; there was not an ungraceful line about him, to his very boots, and the white nails of his slender fingers; even the defects of his figure—­the too great length of the neck and slope of the shoulders—­increased his likeness to those saintly pictures with which he had been mixed up in her mind the night before.  He was at one extreme pole of the different types of manhood, and that burly doctor who had saved his life at the other:  but her Saint Pere alone perfectly combined the two.  There was nobody like him, after all.  Perhaps her wisest plan, as Headley had forgotten his fancy, was to confess all to the Saint Pere (as she usually did her little sins), and get some sort of absolution from him.

However, she must say something in answer—­

“Yes, it is a very lovely view; but really I must say one more word about this matter.  I have to thank you, you know, for the good faith which you have kept with me.”

He looked round, seemingly amused. “Cela va sans dire!” and he bowed; “pray do not say any more about the matter;” and he looked at her with such humble and thankful eyes, that Valencia was sorry not to hear more from him than—­

“Pray tell me—­for of course you know—­the name of this exquisite valley up which I am looking.”

“Gwynnant.  You must go up it when you are well enough; and see the lakes; they are the only ones in Snowdon from the banks of which the primaeval forest has not disappeared.”

“Indeed?  I must make shift to go there this very afternoon, for—­do not laugh at me—­but I never saw a lake in my life.”

“Never saw a lake?”

“No.  I am a true Lowlander:  born and bred among bleak Norfolk sands and fens—­so much the worse for this chest of mine; and this is my first sight of mountains.  It is all like a dream to me, and a dream which I never expected to be realised.”

“Ah, you should see our Irish lakes and mountains—­you should see Killarney!”

“I am content with these; I suppose it is as wrong to break the tenth commandment about scenery, as about anything else.”

“Ah, but it seems so hard that you, who I am sure would appreciate fine scenery, should have been debarred from it, while hundreds of stupid people run over the Alps and Italy every summer, and come home, as far as I can see, rather more stupid than they went; having made confusion worse confounded by filling their poor brains with hard names out of Murray.”