Aspasia walked, in royal dignity of dolour, back to the house, set the violets in two shallow vases, and the chrysanthemum in a high narrow one. She placed the portable easel upon the open leaf of the grand piano; she detached from its panel the portrait of Captain English with the sad stern face, propped it on the easel, arranged her flowers round it, all with the solemn air of one going through a religious rite. Then she sat down, heaved a noisy sigh from the depth of her little round chest, and began to play those throbbing strains of passion, yearning disappointment, and sorrow that, the legend says, came to Chopin one day, through the beat of raindrops against his window panes, as he waited for her who failed him.
Baby had begun to find out that even in so serious an art as music those paltry things, the emotions, will insist on finding expression. She was in a very pretty state of artistic woe when, with a sudden discord, the love notes fell mute. From the shadowy window-seat a tall figure had risen and come forward: eyes, ablaze with anger, were fixed upon her from a white and threatening face.
"Aunt Rosamond! ..." stammered the girl, too much startled to do anything but sit and stare.
"How dare you?" said Lady Gerardine, in a low voice, hardly above a whisper indeed, but charged with intense anger. She walked up to the piano and stood looking a second at the altar-like arrangement; then her eyes returned to Aspasia, who now blushed violently, guiltily, in spite of an irrepressible childish desire to giggle.
"You shameless girl!" said Rosamond. "How dare you! What have you to do with him?" She took up the picture. "He is mine," she said, "mine only!" Then, holding it clasped to her breast, she swept from the room.
"Upon my word!" said Miss Aspasia. "Good gracious goodness me!" Resentment got the better of amusement; her cheeks were flaming scarlet, she struck a series of defiant chords, as a sort of war cry in pursuit of the retreating figure. "Shameless girl, indeed; I've as much right to him, by this time, as anybody else, I should think. In heaven there's no marriage or giving in marriage ... and, if it comes to that, what about Runkle then?"
She plunged into the noisiest, most dishevelled Wagner-Liszt piece of her repertory; crashed, banged, and pounded till the staid old manor-house seemed to ring with amazement, and the exasperated player, with flying hands, loosened hair, empurpled countenance, and panting breath, could hardly keep her seat in the midst of her own gymnastics.
Henceforth there was one room in the manor-house without its presiding picture. And, opposite Rosamond's bed, where the tender child's face had once watched the mother's slumbers, the soldier now looked down sternly and sadly upon the wife.
CHAPTER V
"Will you answer this for me, Baby?—Tell Major Bethune that we shall be glad to see him here this week, and for as long as he cares to stay."