“Well—it’s very nice of you to say so,” answered the girl, all her easy lightheadedness apparently restored, “because I thought I’d been talking your head off all the time we’ve been out; and if it wasn’t that we seem to have a lot of ideas in common, should have thought I’d been boring you to death. But, here we are at home again, and—I don’t care how soon old Judy turns on lunch. Do you?”
“Candidly, I don’t. This gorgeous country air makes all that way.”
It is not strange that, seated opposite each other at table, in the cool, old-world room, the June sunlight slanting through the creepers which partly shaded the wide open window, Helston Varne should have let his imagination run riot. In fact, he was picturing to himself this girl, in her uncommon beauty, her complete naturalness, her quick, unfeigned interest in everything, her grace of movement even in the smallest of things—seated thus with him—always. Albeit those who knew him—even the very few who really knew him—would have reckoned it strange. For since his salad days he could not call to mind any woman he had ever been acquainted with who could be capable of calling up such a suggestion. And the two of them were there alone together; the glow of sunlight outside, the fragrant breaths of glorious summer wafting in from without. Even a straggling wasp or two winnowing down over the table, was not unwelcome, as a sure guarantee that summer was here: rich, glowing, vernal, English summer.
He talked to her—easy, very contented with the hour—and interested her more and more. He told her a few strange, out of the way, bizarre experiences—and the girl listened, almost entranced. This was the sort of thing that appealed, and she contrasted it with the boredom of commonplace, which she was as capable of appreciating—on the wrong side—as she was of appreciating these cullings from a life of action; of keen, intricate, intellectual unravellings of strange occurrences almost unimaginable in their surroundings of weird mystery. Yet he so talked in no wise for the sake of talking, or to glorify himself, but simply and solely because it interested her; and to see that face lit up with vivid interest was sheer enjoyment to Helston Varne at that stage. And the little black fluffy kitten, as though cunningly appreciating the situation, was taking its toll, jumping up first upon one, then upon the other, nibbling daintily at this or that tidbit bestowed upon it, quite unrestrained by Melian, who had always set her face against spoiling it.
“What a life you must have had,” she said. “But—what made you take to it?”
“I don’t know. The sheer sporting instinct, I suppose,” he answered. But he did not tell her as much as he had told Nashby, as to its perils—its continuing perils. Then he deftly switched the conversation on to her own particular interests, in the result of which, when they got up from table, Melian said:
“There’s some queer old oak stuff in one of the lumber rooms upstairs if you’d like to look at it. It’s all jolly dusty though.”
“Certainly I would,” he answered. “I really do like that sort of thing.” And with the remark came the thought of how cheaply he had purchased his hour and a half’s imprisonment in that ghastly ice-house of a vault, what time he had introduced himself here—under false pretences.
“Come along then.”
She led the way upstairs. Now by some curious instinct, Helston Varne’s professional faculties became on the alert. It was as though some mysterious instrument string had suddenly been tuned in his ear.