Part 30 (1/2)

”Consider yourself highly favored, sir,” she said, pausing with her hand upon one of the furthest doors. ”You are the only male being, except my father, who has ever been admitted here.”

She led him into a daintily furnished morning room, full of all those trifling indications of a woman's constant presence which possesses for the man who loves her a peculiar and almost reverent interest. There was her fancy work lying where she had put it down on the little wicker table, a book with a paper knife in it, one of his own; by its side an open piano, with a little pile of songs on the stool, and a sleek dachshund blinking up at them from the hearthrug. The appointments of the room were simple enough, and yet everything seemed to speak of a culture, a refinement, and withal a dainty feminine charm which appealed to him both as an artist and a lover. She drew an easy chair to the fire, and when he was seated, came and stood over him.

”I expect you to like my room, sir,” she said softly. ”Do you?”

”It is like you,” he answered; ”it is perfect.”

They were together for half an hour, and then the dressing bell sounded.

She jumped up at once from her little low chair by his side.

”I must go and give orders about your room,” she said. ”Of course you will stop with us. I have made up my mind where to put you. Roberts shall come and take you to your room in a few moments.”

”Dressing will be a farce for me,” he remarked. ”I have no clothes.”

”Oh, we'll forgive you,” she laughed. ”Of course you were too anxious to get here to think about clothes. That was quite as it should be.

Good-by! Don't be dull.”

He was alone only for a few minutes. Then a servant knocked at the door and took him to his room. He looked around him, and saw more evidences of her care for him. In the sitting room, which opened on one side, was a great bowl of freshly cut flowers, a pile of new books, and a photograph of herself. The rooms were the finest in the house. The oak paneled walls were hung with tapestry, and every piece of furniture was an antique curiosity. It was a bedchamber for a prince, and indeed a royal prince had once slept in the quaint high four-poster with its carved oak pillars and ancient hangings.

To Bernard Maddison, as he strolled round and examined his surroundings, it all seemed like a dream--so delightful, that awakening was a thing to be dreaded indeed. The loud ringing of the second bell, however, soon brought him back to the immediate present. He hastily made such alterations in his toilet as were possible, and descended. In the hall he met Helen, who had changed her dress for a soft cream-colored dinner gown, and was waiting for him.

”Do you like your room?” she asked.

”Like it? It is perfect,” he answered quietly. ”I had no idea that Thurwell was so old. I like you, too,” he added, glancing approvingly at her and taking her hand.

”No time for compliments, sir,” she said, laughing. ”We must go into the drawing-room; Sir Allan is there alone.”

He followed her across the hall, and entered the room with her. Sir Allan, with his back to them, was seated at the piano, softly playing an air of Chopin's to himself. At the sound of the opening door, he turned round.

”Sir Allan, you see we have found another visitor to take pity on us,”

Helen said. ”You know Mr. Maddison, don't you?”

The music, which Sir Allan had been continuing with his right hand, came to a sudden end, and for the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds he remained perfectly motionless. Then he rose and bowed slightly.

”I have that pleasure,” he said quietly. ”Mr. Maddison is a neighbor of yours, is he not? I met him, you know, on a certain very melancholy occasion.”

”Will you go on playing?” she asked, sinking down on a low settee; ”we should like to listen.”

He sat down again, and with half-closed eyes recommenced the air. Helen and Bernard Maddison, sitting side by side, spoke every now and then to one another in a low tone. There was no general conversation until Mr.

Thurwell entered, and then dinner was announced almost immediately.

There was no lack of conversation then. At first it had lain chiefly between Mr. Thurwell and Sir Allan Beaumerville, but catching a somewhat anxious glance from Helen, her lover suddenly threw off his silence.

”When Maddison talks,” one of his admirers had once said, ”everyone else listens”; and if that was not quite so in the present case, it was simply because he had the art of drawing whoever he chose into the conversation, and making them appear far greater sharers in it than they really were. What was in truth a monologue seemed to be a brilliantly sustained conversation, in which Maddison himself was at once the promoter and the background. On his part there was not a single faulty phrase or unmusical expression. Every idea he sprang upon them was clothed in picturesque garb, and artistically conceived. It was the outpouring of a richly stored, cultured mind--the perfect expression of perfect matter.

The talk had drifted toward Italy, and the art of the Renaissance. Mr.

Thurwell had made some remark upon the picturesque beauties of some of the lesser-known towns in the north, and Bernard Maddison had taken up the theme with a new enthusiasm.