Trent slipped the letter and enclosure into a long envelope. “Yes,” he said, “I think it will make him sit up suddenly. Now this thing mustn’t run any risk of going wrong. It would be best to send a special messenger with orders to deliver it into his own hands. If he’s away it oughtn’t to be left.”
She nodded. “I can arrange that. Wait here for a little.”
When Mrs. Manderson returned, he was hunting through the music cabinet. She sank on the carpet beside him in a wave of dark brown skirts. “Tell me something, Philip,” she said.
“If it is among the few things that I know.”
“When you saw uncle last night, did you tell him about—about us?”
“I did not,” he answered. “I remembered you had said nothing about telling any one. It is for you—isn’t it?—to decide whether we take the world into our confidence at once or later on.”
“Then will you tell him?” She looked down at her clasped hands. “I wish you to tell him. Perhaps if you think you will guess why.... There! that is settled.” She lifted her eyes again to his, and for a time there was silence between them.
He leaned back at length in the deep chair. “What a world!” he said. “Mabel, will you play something on the piano that expresses mere joy, the genuine article, nothing feverish or like thorns under a pot, but joy that has decided in favour of the universe? It’s a mood that can’t last altogether, so we had better get all we can out of it.”
She went to the instrument and struck a few chords while she thought. Then she began to work with all her soul at the theme in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony which is like the sound of the opening of the gates of Paradise.