“H’m,” said the old colonel, “perhaps he is anxious to learn.”
“To learn,” contemptuously echoed van Gulpendam, “he will never be any good at cards, he is not practical enough for that!”
“I quite agree with you, Resident,” said the judge somewhat drily, “a man who is not of a practical turn of mind will never make much of a hand at cards.”
“No, nor at anything else either,” grumbled van Gulpendam; “come, let us go on with the game. It is my lead. Hearts, I say.”
The two young people had entered the inner gallery and were no sooner out of sight of the company, before van Nerekool began:
“I have received your note, Miss Anna, and, as you see, I have hastened to obey your summons.”
“For goodness sake speak lower,” whispered she. And then in her usual tone of voice she continued: “Just help me, please, to find the music.”
Whilst they were engaged in taking the pieces one by one out of a curiously carved étagère which stood by the piano and examining them, the young girl said in a whisper: “Yesterday our baboe Dalima was forcibly carried away out of the garden—Hush! do not interrupt me or I shall not have time to tell you all. The author of the outrage is Lim Ho. She has, however, been most providentially rescued by Ardjan, the man to whom she is engaged to be married. Thereupon Lim Ho has had him most fearfully tortured with Kamadoog leaves—so dreadfully that he is now in the hospital—”
“Look here, Miss Anna, I have found your ‘Fleurs d’oranger,’ ” said van Nerekool aloud as he heard some one moving outside.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Anna. “But what can have become of that sonata? Here it is,” she continued in the same tone of voice, “I have it; but pray, Mr. van Nerekool, put that heavy pile of music on the piano.”