I went downstairs very soon after the second dressing bell rang. The drawing-room, which is all chocolate-colour, white, and gilding, struck me as like a picture I had recently seen. The room was lighted by short, thick wax-candles in wall candelabra. In the middle of the room an enormous china bowl of white roses on a round black table perfumed the air. The other object which attracted my attention was a huge grand piano in ebony.
I was just going round to ascertain the maker’s name, when someone jumped up from an easy-chair—Captain Roderick.
“Hulloa!” he said (he had a newspaper in his hand), “it’s Mr. Paull, isn’t it?”
I shook hands with him. A prodigiously good-looking fellow, this cousin, and good company. It was a lively dinner-table. Lilia, child as she is, soon cast aside the stately manner she had put on outside the drawing-room door when she came sailing in to interrupt our tête-à-tête; and she laughed and talked with us all till over dessert we none of us noticed how time fled, until the footman announced that “Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn were in the drawing-room, and coffee was served.”
Mr. Mervyn, the clergyman of the parish, is a tall, dark man with white hair and keen black eyes. His wife is one of those large, soft, fair women with gentle faces and sweet manners, who can nevertheless be stern and unflinching when there is a question of right and wrong—the very woman for a sick nurse.
While we men talked over our coffee, Roderick sat down to the piano and sang: little Italian folk-songs and German lieder. When he was singing, there was a simplicity about him that gave him a likeness to her. She hung over the piano, and seemed almost to forget where she was. When I remembered her confidences a few hours ago, I was puzzled.
Did she love him—or his music?
Presently, my question was answered. When he had sung half-a-dozen chansonnettes, he rose and came across to us.
“You like music, doctor?” he asked.
“I like yours,” I said emphatically.