"I quite see," he began after a pause, and his voice trembled with suppressed emotion, "that I ought to clear myself from such a grave imputation. I am asked to set up a defence, and I can; but in so doing I am forced to reveal a secret ... and I am not sure whether it would be fair to your gracious baroness to enlighten you on the awful failing that has shipwrecked my whole life."
"Tell me at once what it is," urged Lilly, burning with curiosity.
"Well, if you must know, it is this. From childhood I have been pursued by a ghastly fate, which overcomes me at moments when I am most powerless, and fastens on me the responsibility for crimes of which I am utterly innocent. Be prepared, therefore, to hear something terrible. I am--I am a somnambulist."
As he glanced sideways at Lilly, there was such a droll, wicked twinkle playing under the light lashes that she burst into a fit of light laughter. He joined in with his dear old noiseless giggle that shook him like an earthquake. So they stood still and both laughed till they cried; and Lilly forgot all about her exalted duties as chatelaine and her mission of salvation. Then, instinctively, their footsteps turned together into the most deserted and overgrown part of the park, where its bounds were lost in a dense thicket of birches. It grew darker at every step. The foxy little dog had abandoned himself to his fate and trotted obediently after his master.
"The truth is, my dear friend," said he, when they had recovered partially from their levity--"why should I make any false pretences?--I am a poor fish here floundering out of water. Can you imagine what it is to have to lead a vegetable existence in the society of plebeians, and from morning to night practise the arts of virtue and seriousness? I can assure you it's often as bitter as a dose of aloes. Tommy helps me over the worst hours, but even Tommy is sometimes a disappointment.... May I take this opportunity, by-the-by, of asking you a very interesting question, my gracious baroness?"
Delighted at his returning gravity Lilly assented.
"Can you move your ears up and down?"
She was again seized with laughter as with an illness. She leaned against the trunk of a tree, and struggled in vain with her merriment, while he continued in a tone of profound despondency.
"I mastered this modest accomplishment, of which I am not in the least proud, when I was in the Quinta at school. There it was considered the very acme of attainments, and I thought it would be a nice trick to teach my Tommy, who, however, declined to be taught it, though I have wasted hours and expended a lot of mental effort in trying to make him. But one day, by accident, I found out that he could do it much better than I ever could. I came to the conclusion, too, that he had been able to do it all along when he liked, but not when I liked. Is that not very depressing, a symbol of the utter fruitlessness of all human endeavour? Indeed, my dearest baroness, I believe I shall be compelled to become philosopher, out of sheer unutterable boredom."
Lilly could see nothing now but the outline of his figure, behind which the eyes of the foxy one glowed like balls of fire. Not since her schooldays had she enjoyed such a bout of pure fun, and she had to wait for a break in her laughter to remind him that it was time to be going home. He turned obediently, changing Tommy's chain from one hand to the other.