In the middle of it, however, he stopped abruptly, eying his guest.

“Can you write yet?”

“Pretty well.  My arm’s rather stiff.”

“Make your nurse write some notes for you.  That man—­Undershaw—­says you must have some society—­invite some people.”

Faversham laughed.

“I don’t know a soul, either at Keswick or Pengarth.”

“There have been some people inquiring after you.”

“Oh, young Tatham?  Yes, I knew him at Oxford.”

“And the women—­who are they?”

Faversham explained.

“Miss Penfold seems to have recognized me from Undershaw’s account.  They are your nearest neighbours, aren’t they?” He looked smiling at his host.

“I don’t know my neighbours!” said Melrose, emphatically.  “But as for that young ass, Tatham—­ask him to come and see you.”

“By all means—­if you suggest it.”

Melrose chuckled.

“But he won’t come, unless he knows I am safely out of the way.  He and I are not on terms, though his mother and I are cousins.  I dare say Undershaw’s told you—­he’s thick with them.  The young man has been insolent to me on one or two occasions.  I shall have to take him down.  He’s one of your popularity-hunting fools.  However you ask him by all means if you want him.  He’ll come to see you.  Ask him Thursday.  I shall be at Carlisle for the day.  Tell him so.”

He paused, his dark eyeballs, over which the whites had a trick of showing disagreeably, fixing his visitor; then added: 

“And ask the women too.  I shan’t bite ’em.  I saw them from the window the day they came to inquire.  The mother looked perfectly scared.  The daughter’s good looking.”

Manner and tone produced a vague irritation in Faversham.  But he merely said that he would write to Mrs. Penfold.

Two notes were accordingly despatched that evening from the Tower; one to Duddon Castle, the other to Green Cottage.  Faversham had succeeded in writing them himself; and in the exhilaration of what seemed to him a much-quickened convalescence, he made arrangements the following morning to part with his nurse within a few days.  “Do as you like, in moderation,” said Undershaw, “no railway journey for a week or two.”

VII

Melrose had gone to Carlisle.  The Cumbria landscape lay in a misty sunshine, the woods and fields steaming after a night of soaking rain.  All the shades of early summer were melting into each other; reaches of the river gave back a silvery sky, while under the trees the shadows slept.  The mountains were indistinct, drawn in pale blues and purples, on a background of lilac and pearl.  And all the vales “were up,” drinking in the streams that poured from the heights.