She nodded towards a chair near her, and he set the cup down on it carefully. But he did not go.
"You are very busy," he remarked.
"Yes," she replied, shortly. "I have wasted all the morning. Now I must try to make up for it."
"Are you too busy to play something—presently, I mean, when you have had your tea? I must go and work too, directly. I should so enjoy to hear you play before I go."
She laid her sewing on her knee, reached for her cup, and began to sip it with a relenting face. She asked him what kind of music he preferred, and he said he didn't care, but he thought he liked "soft things" best. "There was a thing you played last Sunday night," he suggested; "quite late, just before you went to bed. It has been running in my head ever since."
She balanced her teaspoon in her hand, and puckered her brows thoughtfully. "Let me think—what was I playing on Sunday night?" she murmured to herself. "It must have been one of the Lieder surely—or, perhaps, a Beethoven sonata? Or Batiste's andante in G perhaps?"
"Oh, I don't know the name of anything. I only remember that it was very lovely and sad."
"But we shouldn't play sad things in the broad daylight, when people want to gossip over their tea," she said, glancing at Mrs. M'Intyre, who was energetically describing to Elizabeth the only proper way of making tomato sauce. But she got up, all the same, and went over to the piano, and began to play the andante just above a whisper, caressing the soft pedal with her foot.
"Was that it?" she asked gently, smiling at him as he drew up a low wicker chair and sat down at her elbow to listen.
"Go on," he murmured gratefully. "It was like that."