“How long have you known her—without rodomontade?”
“For about a month, aunt,” replied Mildred. “I have been asking Mr. Castellani why he came to me with an introduction from my friend Mrs. Tomkison, when it would have been more natural to present himself as a friend of yours.”
“O, he has always a motive for what he does,” Miss Fausset said coldly. “You will stay to dinner, of course?” she added to Castellani.
“I am free for this evening, and I should like to stay, if you can forgive my morning coat.”
“I am used to irregularities from you. Give Mrs. Greswold your arm.”
Franz was at the door, announcing the evening meal, and presently Mildred found herself seated at the small round table in the sombre spacious dining-room—a room with a bayed front, commanding an illimitable extent of sea—with César Castellani sitting opposite her. The meal was livelier than the dinner of last night. Castellani appeared unconscious that Mildred was out of spirits. He was full of life and gaiety, and had an air of happiness which was almost contagious. His conversation was purely intellectual, ranging through the world of mind and of fancy, scarcely touching things earthly and human; and thus he struck no jarring chord in Mildred’s weary heart. So far as she could be distracted from the ever-present thought of loss and sorrow, his conversation served to distract her.
He went up to the drawing-room with the two ladies, and at Miss Fausset’s request sat down to the piano. The larger room was still in shadow, the smaller bright with fire and lamplight.
He played as only the gifted few can play—played as one in whom music is a sixth sense, but to-night his music was new to Mildred. He played none of those classic numbers which had been familiar to her ever since she had known what music meant. His muse to-night was full of airy caprices, quips and cranks and wreathed smiles. It was operatic music, of the stage stagey; a music which seemed on a level with Watteau or Tissot in the sister art—gay to audacity, and sentimental to affectation. It was charming music all the same—charged with melody, gracious, complacent, uncertain, like an April day.
Whatever it was, every movement was familiar to Gertrude Fausset. She sat with her long ivory knitting-needles at rest on her lap—sat in a dreamy attitude, gazing at the fire and listening intently. Some melodies seemed to touch her almost to tears. The love of music ran in the Fausset family, and it was no surprise to Mildred to see her aunt so absorbed. What had an elderly spinster to live for if it were not philanthropy and art? And for the plastic arts—for pictures and porcelain, statuary or high-art furniture—Miss Fausset cared not a jot, as those barren drawing-rooms, with their empty walls and pallid colour, bore witness. Music she loved with unaffected devotion, and it was in nowise strange to find her the friend and patroness of César Castellani, opposite as were the opinions of the man who wrote Nepenthe and the woman who had helped to found the church of St. Edmund the Confessor.
“Play the duet at the end of the second act,” she said, when he paused after a brilliant six-eight movement which suggested a joyous chorus.