ecrepit king. There are other flowers too left,
though December has begun, enough to give a faint fragrance to the air
and gay colors to the ground. Just below their feet is a narrow strip of
dark ribbed sand, and then the tangle of weed, scarcely stirred by the
water, that all along this coast fringes like a beard the languid lip of
the Mediterranean Sea.

Molyneux appreciated and admired all this, after his simple fashion, and
said so; his companion did not answer immediately; he only shrugged his
shoulders and lifted his eyebrows, as if he could have disputed the
point if it had not been too much trouble. An optimist in nothing, least
of all was Royston Keene grateful or indulgent to the beauties and
bounties of inanimate creation.

"Ah well!" Harry went on, resignedly, "I know it's useless trying to get
a compliment to Nature out of you. I ought to have given you up that
night when we showed you the Alps from the terrace at Berne. You had
never seen the Jungfrau before, and she had got her prettiest pink
evening dress on, poor thing! and all you would say was, 'There's not
much the matter with the view.'"

"It was a concession to your wife's enthusiasm," Keene replied; "a
sudden check might have been dangerous just then, or I should have
spoken more bitterly, after being brought out to look at mountains, when
I was dusty and travel-stained, wanting baths, and dinners, and other
necessaries of life."

The voice was deep-toned and melodious enough that spoke these words,
but too slow and deliberate to be quite a pleasant one, though there was
nothing like a drawl in it. One could easily fancy such a voice ironical
or sarcastic, but hardly raised much in anger; in the imperative mood it
might be very successful, but it seemed as if it could never have
pleaded or prayed. It matched the speaker's exterior singularly well.
Had you seen him for the first time--couchant, as he was then--you would
have had only an impression of great length and laziness; but as you
gazed on, the vast deep chest expanded under your eye; the knotted
muscles, without an ounce of superfluous flesh to dull their outline,
developed themselves one by one; so that gradually you began to realize
the extent of his surpassing bodily powers, and wondered that you could
have been deceived even for a moment. The face guarded its secret far
more successfully. The features were bold and sharply cut, bronzed up to
the roots of the crisp light-brown beard