He glanced round the wall; Lily interpreted his look. “There are no pictures of his here,” said she; “there is one in my own room. I will show it you when you come again.”
“And now,” said Mr. Braefield, rising, “I must just have a word with your gardener, and then go home. We dine earlier here than in London, Mr. Chillingly.”
As the two gentlemen, after taking leave, re-entered the hall, Lily followed them and said to Kenelm, “What time will you come to-morrow to see the picture?”
Kenelm averted his head, and then replied, not with his wonted courtesy, but briefly and brusquely,—
“I fear I cannot call to-morrow. I shall be far away by sunrise.”
Lily made no answer, but turned back into the room.
Mr. Braefield found the gardener watering a flower-border, conferred with him about the heart’s-ease, and then joined Kenelm, who had halted a few yards beyond the garden-gate.
“A pretty little place that,” said Mr. Braefield, with a sort of lordly compassion, as became the owner of Braefieldville. “What I call quaint.”
“Yes, quaint,” echoed Kenelm, abstractedly.
“It is always the case with houses enlarged by degrees. I have heard my poor mother say that when Melville or Mrs. Cameron first bought it, it was little better than a mere labourer’s cottage, with a field attached to it. And two or three years afterwards a room or so more was built, and a bit of the field taken in for a garden; and then by degrees the whole part now inhabited by the family was built, leaving only the old cottage as a scullery and washhouse; and the whole field was turned into the garden, as you see. But whether it was Melville’s money or the aunt’s that did it, I don’t know. More likely the aunt’s. I don’t see what interest Melville has in the place: he does not go there often, I fancy; it is not his home.”