Turning, she caught a glimpse of Mrs. Lee’s dove-gray dress. She went up the path to meet her. Together they walked across the garden and into Villa Rose.
The black-whiskered man, stooping among the shadows, stole to the gate and watched Rosamond until she disappeared. Then he disposed himself comfortably on the grass under a pear tree and covered his face with his hat. Anon his heavy breathing and zizz-z-zing told the rival locusts and crickets that he slept.
CHAPTER XIV
“Industrious lady! You have brought fancy work of some kind!” Rosamond pointed to the little crocheted bag hanging from the older woman’s wrist.
“Oh, no. Just a bit of lace I’m mending. What an exquisite twilight. It seems a pity to turn on artificial light. Your lighting scheme is very beautiful; but, nevertheless, I’ve always wondered that Mr. Mearely did not keep to candles. They seem more harmonious with his antiques. Electricity is so modern.”
“Mr. Mearely thought that electric light was a great protection. He used to say that a burglar might come into the house, and clear out with the most priceless of his antiques, while he himself was hunting for the intruder with a candle, and that a draught, or even the burglar himself, might blow out the candle; but that, with electric light, one need only turn a button and the guilty party would be discovered and confounded. It was his theory that a sudden blaze of light always frightens wrongdoers.”
Mrs. Lee was composing herself on the large settee near the fireplace. She exchanged her ordinary glasses for her “fine work” spectacles and, setting thimble, scissors, and thread on the little table at the end of the settee, she drew out of the bag a small, circular frame holding the kerchief she was darning.
“Personally, I think he really wanted his art objects properly lit up at night, so that he could sit in his swivel chair and look at them all in turn.” Rosamond turned on the last of the little, separate lamps. Then she opened a drawer in her inlaid desk at the back of the room, near the door to the music room, and took out a pack of cards.