“Miss Courtenay, Sir, would be pleased to see you in the drawing-room, Sir, whenever it was convenient,” said a thin-looking damsel of unmistakably English mould.
“I will wait upon her now,” said Mr. M’Kinlay, with the severe accents of an injured and indignant man. In fact, he spoke like one whose coming might be supposed to evoke sentiments of trepidation, if not of awe; and yet, after he had uttered the words, he fussed and pottered amongst his papers, arranging and settling, and undoing, in a way that to any shrewder observer than the Abigail, would have discovered a mind not by any means so bent upon peremptory action as he had assumed to bespeak.
“Will you show me the way?” said he, at last, as he locked up the writing-desk, and now followed her through room after room, till the girl stopped at a door and knocked gently. No answer was returned, and she repeated the summons, on which the maid opened the door, saying, “If you’ll step inside, Sir, I’ll tell my mistress you are here;” and Mr. M’Kinlay entered into what his first footstep informed him was a lady’s boudoir. It was a small room, opening on a terrace by two windows, which were thrown wide, filling the chamber with the odour of orange-flowers to a degree positively oppressive. An alabaster lamp was the only light, and served merely to throw a sort of faint sunset-glow over the room, which seemed filled with cabinet pictures and statuettes, and had an easel in one corner with an unfinished sketch in oils upon it. The perfume of orange and magnolia was so overcoming that the lawyer moved out upon the terrace, which descended by a flight of marble steps into the sea. He sat down on these to inhale the fresh night air, for already his head was beginning to feel confused and addled by the strong odours.
He had not been many minutes there, when he heard the rustle of a lady’s dress close to him, and before he could arise, Miss Courtenay moved forward and sat down beside him.
“How are you, Mr. M’Kinlay?” said she, giving him her hand cordially. “I have come to thank you for all your care of Ada, and your kindness to us all.”
These very simple words were delivered with a most winning grace of look and manner. No wonder if he forgot all his irritation of a few moments before; no wonder if in the very unexpectedness of this pleasure, he felt somewhat confused; and it but needed that starlight hour, that perfumed air, that murmuring sea, and the light gauzy veil, which in Genoese mode Georgina wore in her hair, and which now floated carelessly half across his arm, to make Mr. M’Kinlay think this one of the happiest moments of his life.
After a few questions about the journey and its incidents, she went on to tell him of themselves, in that tone of easy confidence people use with their nearest friends. “It was a somewhat sad house,” she said, “he had come to. Gervais”—she called him Gervais—“had caught one of those low fevers of the country, and her mother was still very poorly. Her sister, however, had benefited by the climate, and this it was that decided them on remaining abroad. You knew, of course, that Gervais intends to buy this villa?”
“No; he had not heard of it.”
“Nor that he has given up his seat in the House, and retired from public life?”
“Nor that either had he heard.”