"I spend a good deal of time here. One grows to like one's rooms."
His mother's portrait hangs over the fireplace, a charming face, whose beauty is not even disguised by the hideous fashions of 1870, when it was painted.
"She died when I was in Russia," said Antony.
My eyes fell on the mantel-piece. The narrow ledge held three photographs, one of a man, one of Lady Tilchester, and the centre one—an amateur production, evidently—of a little girl with bare feet, putting one fat toe into a stream, her hat hanging down her back, and her face bent down looking at the water.
"What a dear little picture," I said. "Who is that?"
"Oh, that is the Tilchester child, Muriel Harley," he said, carelessly. "We snap-shotted her paddling in the burn in Scotland a year or two ago. Come, it is dressing-time. I must send you up-stairs." And then, as we left the room, "You look so comfortable in that tea-gown! Don't bother to change," he said.
"Why deprive me of displaying to you the splendors I brought over on purpose?" I said, gayly, as I ran up the broad steps.
XIV
I do not think there can be a more agreeable form of entertainment than a tête-à-tête dinner, provided your companion is sympathetic. Anyway, to me this will always be one of the golden hours in my life to look back upon.
Never had Antony been so attractive. Every sentence was well expressed, and only when one came to think of them afterwards, did one discover their subtle flattery.