“His lordship’s wine,” murmured Simmons, and there checked himself. “—How much did you drink, sir—if I may make so bold?”
“I had one glass during dinner, and more than one, but not nearly two, after.”
“Pooh! pooh, sir! That could never hurt a strong man like you! You ought to know better than that! Look at me!”
But he did not go on with his illustration.
“Tut!” he resumed, “that make you sleep till ten o’clock!—If you will kindly wait in the hall, or in the schoolroom, I will bring you his lordship’s orders.”
So saying while he washed his hands and took off his white apron, Simmons departed on his errand to his master. Donal went to the foot of the grand staircase, and there waited.
As he stood he heard a light step above him, and involuntarily glancing up, saw the light shape of lady Arctura come round the curve of the spiral stair, descending rather slowly and very softly, as if her feet were thinking. She checked herself for an infinitesimal moment, then moved on again. Donal stood with bended head as she passed. If she acknowledged his obeisance it was with the slightest return, but she lifted her eyes to his face with a look that seemed to have in it a strange wistful trouble—not very marked, yet notable. She passed on and vanished, leaving that look a lingering presence in Donal’s thought. What was it? Was it anything? What could it mean? Had he really seen it? Was it there, or had he only imagined it?
Simmons kept him waiting a good while. He had found his lordship getting up, and had had to stay to help him dress. At length he came, excusing himself that his lordship’s temper at such times—that was, in his dumpy fits—was not of the evenest, and required a gentle hand. But his lordship would see him—and could Mr. Grant find the way himself, for his old bones ached with running up and down those endless stone steps? Donal answered he knew the way, and sprang up the stair.
But his mind was more occupied with the coming interview than with the way to it, which caused him to take a wrong turn after leaving the stair: he had a good gift in space-relations, but instinct was here not so keen as on a hill-side. The consequence was that he found himself in the picture-gallery.
A strange feeling of pain, as at the presence of a condition he did not wish to encourage, awoke in him at the discovery. He walked along, however, thus taking, he thought, the readiest way to his lordship’s apartment: either he would find him in his bedroom, or could go through that to his sitting-room! He glanced at the pictures he passed, and seemed, strange to say, though, so far as he knew, he had never been in the place except in the dark, to recognize some of them as belonging to the stuff of the dream in which he had been wandering through the night—only that was a glowing and gorgeous dream, whereas the pictures were even commonplace! Here was something to be meditated upon—but for the present postponed! His lordship was expecting him!