“It’s that man’s voice—it’s so beautiful and yet—ugh!” She shivered as the door opened and the three men came in.
“You’ve not been long,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, looking up at Crowdie. “I hope they gave you a cigar in there.”
“Oh, yes, thanks—and a very good one, too,” added the artist, who had not succeeded in smoking half of the execrable Connecticut six-for-a-quarter cigar which the philanthropist had offered him.
It seemed natural enough to him that a man who devoted himself to idiots should have no taste, and he would have opened his eyes if he had been told that the Connecticut tobacco was one of the economies imposed by Alexander Junior upon his long-suffering father. The old gentleman, however, was really not very particular, and his sufferings were not to be compared with those of Balzac’s saintly charity-maniac, when he gave up his Havanas for the sake of his poor people.
Crowdie looked at Katharine, as he answered her mother, and continued to do so, though he sat down beside the latter. Katharine had risen from her seat, and was standing by the mantelpiece, and Mrs. Lauderdale was sitting at the end of the sofa on the other side of the fireplace, under the strong, unshaded light of the gas. She made an effort to talk to her guest, for the sake of sparing the girl, though she felt uncomfortably tired, and was looking almost ill.
“Did you talk any more about the soul, after we left?” she asked, looking at Crowdie.
“No,” he answered, still gazing at Katharine, and speaking rather absently. “We talked—let me see—I think—” He hesitated.
“It couldn’t have been very interesting, if you don’t remember what it was about,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, pleasantly. “We must try and amuse you better than they did, or you won’t come near us again.”
“Oh, as far as that goes, I’ll come just as often as you ask me,” answered Crowdie, suddenly looking at his shoes.
But he made no attempt to continue the conversation. Mrs. Lauderdale felt a little womanly annoyance. The constant and life-long habit of being considered by men to be the most important person in the room, whenever she chose to be considered at all, had become a part of her nature. She made up her mind that Crowdie should not only listen and talk, but should look at her.