Lady Perivale smiled. She was accustomed to her friend's enthusiasms and ultra-Liberal ideas.
"It's time for me to go home, Grace. I asked Johnson to order a cab at eleven. Oh, by-the-by, it is ages since you took a cup of tea in my cottage. I wish you'd come at five o'clock next Saturday. I have picked up an old print or two—genuine Bartolozzis—rural subjects—that I am dying to show you."
"I should love to go to you, Sue. But you may have people."
"No, no; Friday is my day. I never expect any one on Saturday."
"Then I'll come. It will seem like old times—like last year, when I had nothing on my mind."
"Oh, but that business is on Mr. Faunce's mind now, and off yours. You are going to be in good spirits again; and I shall come and make music with you once or twice a week, if you'll have me. There is that little German, who fiddles so beautifully, Herr Kloster. You heard him at my party, last year. I'll bring him to play duets with you."
"It would be delightful; but I doubt if I shall be in spirits for music."
"Oh, I am not going to let you mope. What a fool I was not to suggest a detective the day you came home. Good night, dear. Saturday next, as soon as you like after half-past four."
Miss Rodney lived in a pretty little house facing Regent's Park, the kind of house that agents describe as a bijou residence, and which rarely contains more than two habitable bedrooms. It was a picturesque little house, with a white front, a verandah below, and a balcony above, and a tiny pretence of a garden, and the rent was higher than Susan could afford when she set up in London as a teacher of singing and the pianoforte, leaving her three sisters to vegetate in the paternal home, a great red-brick house in a Midland market town, where their father was everybody's family solicitor.
During the earlier years of her London career, Susan had worked hard for her house, and for her pretty furniture, her bits of genuine Sheraton and Chippendale, picked up cheaply in back streets and out-of-the-way corners, her chintz curtains and chair-covers and delicate carpets. Her own maintenance, and her one devoted servant, who did all the work of the house, yet always looked a parlourmaid, cost so little; and, after helping the girls at home with handsome additions to their pocket-money, Miss Rodney could afford to dress well, and keep her house in exquisite order, every now and then adding some artistic gem to that temple of beauty.