Violin in hand, he had walked in upon their mother and the seven Pelham-Hews at eight o’clock one morning in house-cleaning time. Some of the septet were on ladders and on chairs with mops and with dusters, rubbing the paper down or cleaning the pictures; and others were beating cushions or mattresses and generally translating the word home into horror. Thinking that nothing but financial ruin or a death from infectious disease could make such an upheaval necessary, and eager to offer the only consolation in his power—a tender, wordless sympathy—he had seated himself on a rolled mattress and played to them for two hours without cessation; then, with tender looks, taken his departure.
“I, too, have the spirit. I, too, belong to Roseborough,” was all that he said, as he waved them a majestic farewell from the door. Thinking him mad, not a Pelham-Hew had dared to move or speak during the recital. Anabeth, whose foot had gone to sleep, fell off the ladder as soon as he had gone and struck her funny-bone, the accident resulting in severe hysterics.
He had made himself equally free of the house and grounds of Villa Rose. Though, before others, his manner to the Villa’s lady was formal, he expressed, in private, the intimate affection of a brother. Her widowhood appealed to his chivalry; and her black ribbons, he said, put out the sun for him; how had the anomaly of grief entered Roseborough and how had it attached itself to her?
“In me you have always a brother, a friend, a protector,” he would say. “What privilege of manhood is more to be envied than the right to shelter women?”
She saw him now, and perceived that he had already seen her and was playing to her—the minuet she loved. He came slowly down the path, his dark eyes fixed on her, a smile about the lips that were too finely and sensitively formed for a man’s mouth.
Regarding each other and yielding to the charm of the sunset and the music, they did not observe a black-whiskered man who was crawling through the orchard and hiding from time to time behind the broad tree trunks. He was observing them, however, minutely.
Frei paused beside her. They did not speak until the exquisite melody was ended. He took her hand and kissed it.
“Rosamond.” It was his habit to address her so, because—so he said—the sound of her name was like music.
“Your music supplies the only thing that this wonderful scene lacked,” she said—“melody!”
“You are moved. How beautiful your eyes and lips are when feeling stirs you! I have often remarked it. It is like a wind in the rose garden to-night, because you are a rose. I can see rose petals under that white cloud. Remove your cloak.”