He did so as if in a dream. The whole scene was taking a powerful hold on his imagination.
"Hannibal," she cried, raising her voice in a soft, bird-like call, and from the dim kitchen whence certain spluttering sounds had preceded him, Hannibal appeared with a heaping plate of buttered toast.
"With your permission," she said, "I will sit down and take a cup of tea with you, in a neighborly way, for I wish to ask you some more questions, and tea, you know, is a great incentive to talk," and she took a chair on the opposite side of the table, while Hannibal stood a little in the background to wait on them with all the formality of the olden time.
The wood fire blazed and crackled, and threw its flickering light over Edith's fair face, and intensified her beauty, as her features gleamed out, or faded, as the flames rose and fell. Hannibal stood motionless behind her chair as if he might have been an Ethiopian slave attendant on a young sultana. To Arden's aroused imagination, it seemed like one of the scenes of his fancy, and he was almost afraid to move or speak, lest all should vanish, and he find himself plodding along the dark muddy road.
"What is the matter?" she asked curiously. "Why don't you drink your tea?"
"It all seems as strange and beautiful as a fairy tale," he said, looking at her earnestly.
Her hearty laugh and matter-of-fact tone dispelled his illusion, as she said:
"It's all dreadfully real to me. I feel as if I had done more work to-day than in all my life before, and we have only made a beginning. I want to ask you about the place and the garden, and how to get things done," and she plied him well with the most practical questions.
Sometimes he answered a little incoherently, for through them all he saw a face full of strange weird beauty, as the firelight flickered upon it, and gave a star-like lustre to the large dark eyes.
Hannibal, in the background, grinned and chuckled silently, as he saw Arden's dazed, wondering admiration, saying to himself, "Dey ain't used to such young ladies as mine, up here—it kind o' dazzles 'em."