“Now, I must be off to bed. I have overstayed.” Mrs. Lee was rejecting Mrs. Witherby’s efforts to keep her “just another half hour.” “One must go to sleep when the twilight ends, if one would really enjoy early rising. I think I may almost say I have not missed a sunrise for twenty years.”
“Sunrise?” Howard repeated, “I often wonder how you do it! I find half-past eight almost too early.”
“Dr. Frei and I will go with you,” Rosamond said. Frei, hearing his name, turned. The Judge followed him for the purpose of concluding his arguments.
“As I was saying,” he insisted, “I have only one criticism to make of Beethoven’s sonatas....”
Frei wheeled upon him, and silenced him with a commanding gesture.
“Do not make it!” he said, frowning fiercely as at the most hated of enemies. “Beethoven is not here to defend himself. Ach! I detest criticism. It is the speech of those who do not understand.”
The judge, feeling aggrieved at this public snubbing, walked off, muttering under his breath: “Touchy fiddler!” Frei gave his arm to Mrs. Lee.
“Good-bye, for the present.” Rosamond waited an instant to offer cheer to her remaining guests, before joining Mrs. Lee and Frei on the verandah. “Some of you will have time for another game before we return. The chess board is just as you and Wilton left it, Judge. When cards and chess pall, you will find sandwiches and salad, with perhaps a jelly or two and some of Amanda’s parsnip wine on the dining-room table. I know we can’t persuade Mrs. Lee.”
“No, dear, not in the evening. Good-night, dear friends. I shall see you all at breakfast, to-morrow. A quarter to eleven. Don’t fail me.”
“We won’t!” Corinne called to her, above the calmer promises of the older folk.