Roden admitted that “Miss Faginia” had been quite right in her conjecture. In half an hour he went out into the big hall, which, divided by three arches, ran through the centre of the house. Over the first was a fine moose-head. There were skins of many beasts here and there on the slippery oak floor, and straight-backed chairs set against the panelled wall, which some barbarian had painted white. A much-carved oak table on one side supported a large silver flagon and two old-fashioned tankards. On the other was an old-fashioned hat-rack, filled mostly with feminine head-gear of various makes and sizes. A pair of branchy antlers supported riding-canes of all descriptions.
Guided by the sounds of a piano softly played, Roden opened a door on his left, and found himself in a large firelit room, whose walls were absolutely covered with pictures large and small, all in old Italian frames, all more or less stiff and ill painted, all hung, regardless of size or shape, as close to one another as they could possibly be placed. The effect of the thus concentrated colors was, in spite of the defects of the pictures themselves, quaint and jewel-like. Over the mantle of carved oak reached upward to the ceiling an enormous square mirror in the style of the First Empire. On one side of the room was hung its mate, also in lonely grandeur, and facing the portrait of a very rosy dame in a still rosier tulle dress, the whole suggesting in color the presence of the all-pervading Virginian soil.
Just under this second mirror was a piano, and at this piano was standing the overseer’s daughter, striking idle chords with her left hand.
She had taken off her Rosalind costume, and appeared in a blue homespun dress, neat and scant of make, and with her two big braids hanging over her shoulders.
“Oh, it’s you!” she said, addressing Roden. “I was just trying th’ piano to see ’f any ’v the keys’d stuck since the last Englishman left; but th’ haven’t. D’you like music?” she went on, in her vibrant voice, which seemed in some strange manner to harmonize with the firelight and the now steady hum of the rain without. “I’ll tell you, before you say anything, I can play very well.”
Roden found her open conceit a very novel and amusing sensation, but when she had struck a few chords firmly, her long fingers sinking in among the keys as might the fingers of a miser among the gold coin that he loved, he thought no more of anything save the melody that filled the room.
“Gad!” said he, when she had ceased, “I should say you could play, rather! Where on earth—who taught you?”
“No one,” she said, absently, striking noiseless chords with her left hand, and not looking at him. “I’ve heard people, and I do’t by ear. And the men that’ve had th’ Hall’ve been awful kind ’bout lettin’ me play—an’ that’s all,” comprehensively—adding, with sudden irrelevance, “Were your clothes quite dry?”
“Quite,” he assured her; “but they are beastly dirty to come to supper in.”