Every woman is at heart a matchmaker. Eve yielded, and accepted Sefton’s invitation for five o’clock tea and a little music.
“Shall you have any singing?” she asked, with a sudden fear of meeting Signora Vivanti.
No—there would be no singing.
“I only asked the American banjo man to amuse you,” said Mr. Sefton. “He is a capital fellow, and he does the most wonderful things with his banjo. He is a Paganini among banjoists. That, with the inevitable piano, will be more than enough music.”
The afternoon, at the end of a brilliant July, was delightful, and the Embankment, with its red-brick palaces and its little bit of old Chelsea, looked just the one perfect place in which to live; to live an idle, artistic life, bien intendu, and bask in sunshine reflected from blue water. The tide was at the flood, the gardens were full of gaudy July flowers.
“How horrid Fernhurst will be after this!” sighed Sophy. “What a lucky man Mr. Sefton is to have a house in Tite Street, as well as the Manor!”
“Ah, but it is only a bachelor den, remember,” said Eve. “He will do away with it when he marries.”
“Not if his wife has any sense—unless she makes him change it for a larger house facing the river.”
Mr. Sefton’s house was near the corner, and commanded a sidelong view of the Thames from all the front windows, and a still better view from an oriel in the library, which projected so as to rake the street. Sophy thought this small house in Tite Street, with its rich and sombre furniture and subdued colouring, one of the most enchanting houses she had ever entered, second only to the Manor House, which she had seen some years before on the never-to-be-forgotten occasion of a Primrose League garden-party given by Mr. Sefton in the interests of the cause. The Manor House and its splendours of art, its old gardens, and antique furniture, were the growth of centuries, and owed their existence to Seftons who were dust. This twelve-roomed house in Tite Street was an emanation of the man himself. His temperament, his education, his tastes were all embodied here. This was the pleasure dome which he had built for himself—this was his palace of art.
She went about peeping and peering at everything, escorted by Mr. Tivett, who expatiated and explained to his heart’s content, pointing out the workmanship which made a mahogany table as precious as jasper or ivory; the artistic form of those high-backed chairs, copied from an old French model; the Gobelin tapestry, which had neither the glow nor sheen of silken fabrics, and yet was six times as costly.