She rang for fresh tea and went to the tea-table. Carson stood about the room, seeming to fill it.
"If you are fond of grey, we have a taste in common," he said, and she gave him a quick, upward glance. The face which Africa's sun had branded her own looked extraordinarily dark above the light-grey of his clothes and the little pink flower stuck in his coat. It seemed to her that no woman had ever loved so debonair a man as this Irishman with his careless eyes and rustling voice.
"I love green best of all colours," she answered steadily; "but one gets tired of green walls now that they are fashionable and everyone has them—" her voice broke off suddenly. In his looming about the room he had stopped dead before Hope over the mantelpiece. The cup Poppy held rattled in its saucer. He presently asked who the picture was by, and where he, too, could get a copy of it.
"I like it," he said. "It seems to me in a vague way that I know that picture well, yet I don't believe I have ever seen it before ... strange...!" He stared at it again, and she made no response. For the moment she was back in a little upper chamber in Westminster.
He came presently over to the tea-table, and was about to sit down when another picture caught his eye—the water-colour of the little child among the poppies and corn. He stepped before it and stayed looking for a long time. At last he said, laughing constrainedly:
"You will think I am mad ... but I imagine I know that picture too ... that little chap is extraordinarily like someone I know ... I can't think who ... but I'm certain ... is it some of your work, Miss Chard?"
He looked at her with keen inquiry, but his glance changed to one of astonishment. Her eyes were closed and she was pale as a primrose; her hands had fallen to her sides.
A moment afterwards she recovered herself and was handing him a cup of tea with some inconsequent remark. She had made absolutely no response to his questions about either picture, and he thought the fact rather remarkable.
Afterwards they talked and he forgot surprise (for the time being) in listening to the shy graces of thought to which she gave utterance and watching her inexpressibly charming delicacies of manner. When he left her the magic of her was on him; she had bound him with the spell of his own country; but he did not know it. If he had known it he would have repudiated it with all his strength, for already he was a bound man.
"His honour rooted in dishonour stood."