Mr. Paget saw his daughter back to Park-lane, but he did not go into the house. Valentine rang the bell, and when Masters opened the door she asked him where her husband was.
"In the library, ma'am; you can hear him can't you? He's practising of the violin."
Yes, the music of this most soul-speaking, soul-stirring instrument filled the house. Valentine put her finger to her lips to enjoin silence, and went softly along the passage which led to the library. The door was a little ajar—she could look in without being herself seen. Some sheets of music were scattered about on the table, but Wyndham was not playing from any written score. The queer melody which he called Waves was filling the room. Valentine had heard it twice before—she started and clasped her hands as its passion, its unutterable sadness, its despair, reached her. Where were the triumph notes which had come into it six weeks ago?
She turned and fled up to her room, and locking the door, threw herself by her bedside and burst into bitter weeping.
"Oh, Gerald, I love you! I do love you; but I'll never show it. No, never, until you tell me the truth."
CHAPTER XXV.
"Yes," said Augusta Wyndham, "if there is a young man who suits me all round it's Mr. Carr. Yes," she said, standing very upright in her short skirts, with her hair in a tight pig-tail hanging down her back, and her determined, wide open, bright eyes fixed upon an admiring audience of younger sisters. "He suits me exactly. He's a kind of hail-fellow-well-met; he has no nonsensical languishing airs about him; he preaches nice short sermons, and never bothers you to remember what they are about afterwards; he's not bad at tennis or cricket, and he really can cannon quite decently at billiards; but for all that, if you think, you young 'uns, that he's going to get inside of Gerry, or that he's going to try to pretend to know better than Gerry what I can or can't do, why you're all finely mistaken, so there!"
Augusta turned on her heel, pirouetted a step or two, whistled in a loud, free, unrestrained fashion, and once more faced her audience.