Elise wiped her eyes on her lace handkerchief and pulled awkwardly at its border.
'A little more conserve, Elise,' said Marion gently. ''Tis your favourite, you know.'
The awkward moment passed. The Admiral poured out a little wine for the ladies, and calling 'The King!' drained his own glass.
Presently Marion rose, and the two girls, leaving the Admiral to finish his bottle, went into the hall, which served as a general sitting-room. The little drawing-room above had never been used since my lady's death. According to the wishes of the Admiral that apartment had never been invaded by 'the children.' It remained exactly as in the last days of its mistress, with the little card box and the sugar-plum box on the small table by the high-backed chair, and the work frame with its needle, now sadly rusted, where the fair fingers of the lady of Garth had left it. The servants used lovingly to say that their master went to pray there; and certainly he had been seen to come out with a suspiciously dim look in his honest sailor's eyes.
The evening was soft and warm, full of spring airs, and the doors and casements of the hall were set wide. Without a word Elise settled herself in one of the broad mullioned window seats and took up the embroidery of a petticoat she had in hand. Her mouth was tightly set, her eyes over bright. Marion, her thoughts all criss-cross in her head, like Elise's fancy stitches, sat down at the spinet. She found a relief in drawing out the tinkling airs, and oddly to her as she sat came a dim memory of her mother in a rose-coloured gown sitting on that same stool, playing, when her little daughter, her 'sweet baby,' was taken in to kiss her good night. A wave of loneliness surged over her, and finding her fingers, turned her tunes into sad ones. For the first time she realised that her aunt's presence, while appearing in the nature of a trial, had been a support whose need she had only just begun to realise. She suddenly felt very young, very inexperienced, very forlorn. There was an indefinable change coming over the house, as shapeless as the first wisps that fore-ran the grey sea fogs of the coast. The sad tinkling airs went on and presently drew the Admiral from his bottle.
'Mawfy, Mawfy,' says he, pulling aside the curtain that hung over the dining-room door, 'if you go on much longer I'll be calling to be measured for my shroud.'
Marion smiled and turned into a livelier key but before she had played many bars a door opened to admit Peter bearing a salver.
'A letter, sir,' he said. 'Zacchary found un waiting down to the coaching house to Lostwithiel, sir.'
The Admiral gave a glance at the superscription, then broke the seals.
'Our fair Constance, if I mistake not. Let us see what she writes.'