In one of the carriages in this train Master Harry Trelyon and his grandmother were seated.  How he had ever persuaded her to go with him to Cornwall by train was mysterious enough, for the old lady thoroughly hated all such modern devices.  It was her custom to go traveling all over the country with a big, old-fashioned phaeton and a pair of horses; and her chief amusement during these long excursions was driving up to any big house she took a fancy to, in order to see if there was a chance of its being let to her.  The faithful old servant who attended her, and who was about as old as the coachman, had a great respect for his mistress, but sometimes he swore—­inaudibly—­when she ordered him to make the usual inquiry at the front-door of some noble lord’s country residence, which he would as soon have thought of letting as of forfeiting his seat in the House of Peers or his hopes of heaven.  But the carriage and horses were coming down, all the same, to Eglosilyan, to take her back again.

“Harry,” she was saying at this moment, “the longer I look at you, the more positive I am that you are ill.  I don’t like your color:  you are thin and careworn and anxious.  What is the matter with you?”

“Going to school again at twenty-one is hard work, grandmother,” he said.  “Don’t you try it.  But I don’t think I’m particularly ill:  few folks can keep a complexion like yours, grandmother.”

“Yes,” said the old lady, rather pleased, “many’s the time they said that about me, that there wasn’t much to complain of in my looks; and that’s what a girl thinks of then, and sweethearts and balls, and all the other men looking savage when she’s dancing with any one of them.  Well, well, Harry; and what is all this about you and the young lady your mother has made such a pet of?  Oh yes, I have my suspicions; and she’s engaged to another man, isn’t she?  Your grandfather would have fought him, I’ll be bound; but we live in a peaceable way now.  Well, well, no matter; but hasn’t that got something to do with your glum looks, Harry?”

“I tell you, grandmother, I have been hard at work in London.  You can’t look very brilliant after a few months in London.”

“And what keeps you in London at this time of the year?” said this plain-spoken old lady.  “Your fancy about getting into the army?  Nonsense, man! don’t tell me such a tale as that.  There’s a woman in the case:  a Trelyon never puts himself so much about from any other cause.  To stop in town at this time of the year!  Why, your grandfather, and your father too, would have laughed to hear of it.  I haven’t had a brace of birds or a pheasant sent me since last autumn—­not one.  Come, sir, be frank with me.  I’m an old woman, but I can hold my tongue.”

“There’s nothing to tell, grandmother,” he said.  “You just about hit it in that guess of yours:  I suppose Juliott told you.  Well, the girl is engaged to another man:  what more is to be said?”