He hesitated. Then he said: "No," and "No" again, with a cold incisiveness.
"Oh!"
Miss Cuningham was nonplussed; yet was she interested, in spite of herself. "What a rude pig!" she thought angrily, in her downright schoolgirl vernacular. But the next moment his saturnine face softened.
"Do not let me keep you," he said. "You want to return to your music. You were practising very hard. I have never heard any one play scales with such energy over here before. It quite brought me back to the schoolroom in the old place at home."
His expression softened still more as he spoke.
Aspasia was delighted to find him so human all at once; and, being herself the most gregarious little soul alive, hastened to take advantage of the opportunity.
"Oh, it does not matter now," she said. "Thank you. It is rather hot. I will finish my exercises later on. You see, I must keep up my technique." She stretched her fingers again, with an important air. "But, when he's at home, it annoys the Runkle—there it is again! I cannot help it, really. I only began it for fun, to tease him; now it's irresistible, nervous I think. You remember, I told you my name is Aspasia. A stupid sort of name. You cannot even shorten it into anything decent. You could not call me Aspy, or Pashy, or Asia, could you? So people have got into the way of calling me Baby. I do not mind. It's better than Aspasia. But uncle won't. He is my godfather, you see, and thinks it's a lovely name. There's a stupid old cousin of ours, Lady Aspasia Something-or-other, whom he thinks the world of. So he always will say: 'My dear Raspasia ... my dear Raspasia!' So I got into the way of calling him: 'My dear Runkle Rarthur!' Rather silly, but I began it in sheer self-defence. And now—it's really quite wicked—everybody calls him the Runkle, all the secretaries and things—behind his back, of course. And there's one of them, a silly sort of creature, Mr. Simpson—I thought it was him, just now—he's not got used to it yet, and he always goes purple and explodes. And the Runkle gets mad. He has to pretend he has not noticed anything, to save his dignity!"
Her frank young laugh rang out, one might have thought infectiously enough. But the visitor's eyes had wandered from her. And as now (perceiving suddenly that he had not been listening to her) she fell into an affronted silence, she noticed how they became fixed in the direction of the door with a curious intensity of gaze, like that of a hawk sighting his quarry.
One of the native servants, who kept squatting watch in the passage without, had noiselessly pushed the door-hangings aside; a soft murmur of muslin skirts against matting grew into the silence. Lady Gerardine came into the room. She was looking at a card in her hand.
"Major Bethune?" she said questioningly, as she approached.