The delighted school-girls gathered into a knot, smiling and whispering. Violante glanced round, as in sacred precincts, and Arthur, pointing to the lashing rain, laughed boyishly.
“Here you are, fairly caught in the ogre’s castle. What shall I do—shall I have up Mrs Stedman?”
“Don’t be so absurd,” said Flossy, aside. “What will the girls think of you?”
“No? Then I’ll try to be polite. Isn’t this a quaint room, Miss Mattei?”
It was a long room with three high windows, looking over the garden, against which the rain was beating violently. Everything was slender, prim, and pale-coloured. Old-fashioned prints hung on the walls, on the paper of which long-tailed birds drank out of wonderful vases. Old china was varied by wax flowers and queer little bits of fancy work. Elaborate wool-work chairs were preserved with tight-fitting muslin covers. Arthur made Violante sit down in a tall straight-backed one; he opened a cabinet of curiosities for the amusement of the girls, and was just beginning: “I don’t know when I’ve seen you, Flossy,” when the door opened and Hugh walked in, to find the stiff grandmotherly chamber full of laughing, summer-clothed girls, and in the centre, soft and smiling, Violante herself.
“Hugh looks like a man who has ridden into a fairy ring,” said Arthur, as his cousin paused in utter surprise.
Hugh made a few polite speeches, Flossy some rather hurried explanations, and then their host fell silent, till, after a minute or two, he said, gravely:
“Arthur, don’t you think we could give these young ladies some tea?”
“To be sure. I’ll go and see what can be produced.”
“Arthur has made the house quite habitable,” said Hugh to Flossy.