'This,' he said, holding her by the arm, 'is the drawing-room. Isn't it a fine room.' And he explained the piano, and told her how he had found a button off, and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he drew her attention to the curtains,—he had no objections to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at the beginning, if she didn't think it a fine room.
Lucy said it was a very fine room.
'You'll remember to put the cover on properly when you've finished playing the piano, won't you,' he said.
'Yes I will,' said Lucy. 'Only I don't play,' she added, remembering she didn't.
'That's all right then,' he said, relieved.
They were still standing admiring the proportions of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of its lighting—'The test of good lighting,' said Wemyss, 'is that there shouldn't be a corner of a room in which a man of eighty can't read his newspaper'—when the gong began.
'Good Lord,' he said, looking at his watch, 'it'll be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we've had nothing at all of the afternoon, and I'd planned to show you so many things. Ah,' he said, turning and shaking his head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, 'whose fault has that been?'
'Mine,' said Lucy.
He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made her blink.
'Ah, my Lucy,' he said fondly, 'little waster of happiness—isn't it better simply to love your Everard than make him unhappy?'