his control to allow him to
invent a hurried pretext for leaving her. He had forgotten to buy some
tobacco in a shop they had just passed, he said; he would go back for
it now, she must walk on slowly and he would overtake her directly;
and so he turned and left her to meet Vincent Holroyd alone.

CHAPTER XXXII.

AT WASTWATER.

In a little private sitting-room of the rambling old whitewashed
building, half farmhouse, half country inn, known to tourists as the
Pillar Hotel, Wastwater, Holroyd and Caffyn were sitting one evening,
nearly a week after their first arrival in the Lake district. Both
were somewhat silent, but the silence was not that contented one which
comes of a perfect mutual understanding, as appeared by the conscious
manner in which they endeavoured to break it now and then, without
much success. By this time, indeed, each was becoming heartily tired
of the other, and whatever cordiality there had been between them was
fast disappearing on a closer acquaintance. During the day they kept
apart by unspoken consent, as Caffyn's natural indolence was enough of
itself to prevent him from being Vincent's companion in the long
mountain walks by which he tried to weary out his aching sense of
failure; but at night, as the hotel was empty at that season, they
were necessarily thrown together, and found it a sufficient
infliction.

Every day Holroyd determined that he would put an end to it as soon as
he could with decency, as a nameless something in Caffyn's manner
jarred on him more and more, while nothing but policy restrained
Caffyn himself from provoking an open rupture. And so Holroyd was
gazing absently into the fire, where the peat and ling crackled
noisily as it fell into fantastic peaks and caves, and Caffyn was idly
turning over the tattered leaves of a visitors' book, which bore the
usual eloquent testimony to the stimulating influence of scenery upon
the human intellect. When he came to the last entry, in which, while
the size of the mountains was mentioned with some approval, the
saltness of the hotel butter was made the subject of severe comment,
he shut the book up with a yawn.

'I shall miss the life and stir of all this,' he observed, 'when I get
back to town again.' Holroyd did not appear to have heard him, and, as
Caffyn had intended a covert sting, the absence of all response did
not improve his temper. 'I can't think why the devil they don't send
me the paper,' he went on irrita