“And you’re only here just for two days, Miss Olga,” she said, “at least so Georgie tells me, and he usually knows your movements. And then London, I suppose, and you’ll be busy rehearsing for the opera. I must certainly manage to be in London for a week or two this year, and come to ‘Siegried,’ and ‘The Valkyrie,’ in which, so I see in the papers, you’re singing. Georgie, you must take me up to London when the opera comes on. Or perhaps——”
She paused a moment.
“Pepino, shall I tell all our dear friends our little secret?” she said. “If you say ‘no,’ I sha’n’t. But, please, Pepino——”
Pepino, however, had been instructed to say “yes,” and accordingly did so.
“You see, dear Miss Olga,” said Lucia, “that a little property has come to us through that grievous tragedy last week. A house has been left to Pepino in Brompton Square, all furnished, and with a beautiful music-room. So we’re thinking, as there is no immediate hurry about selling it, of spending a few weeks there this season, very quietly of course, but still perhaps entertaining a few friends. Then we shall have time to look about us, and as the house is there, why not use it in the interval? We shall go there at the end of the month.”
This little speech had been carefully prepared, for Lucia felt that if she announced the full extent of their plan, Riseholme would suffer a terrible blow. It must be broken to Riseholme by degrees: Riseholme must first be told that they were to be up in town for a week or two, pending the sale of the house. Subsequently Riseholme would hear that they were not going to sell the house.
She looked round to see how this section of Riseholme took it. A chorus of the emphatic “No” burst from Georgie, Mrs. Quantock, and Olga, who, of course, had fully discussed this disclosure already; even Robert, very busy with his dinner, said “No” and went on gobbling.
“So sweet of you all to say ‘No,’” said Lucia, who knew perfectly well that the emphatic interjection meant only surprise, and the desire to hear more, not the denial that such a thing was possible, “but there it is. Pepino and I have talked it over—non è vero, carissimo?—and we feel that there is a sort of call to us to go to London. Dearest Aunt Amy, you know, and all her beautiful furniture! She never would have a stick of it sold, and that seems to point to the fact that she expected Pepino and me not to wholly desert the dear old family home. Aunt Amy was born there, eighty-three years ago.”
“My dear! How it takes one back!” said Georgie.
“Doesn’t it?” said Olga.