CHAPTER VI.
A PERPLEXING REFLECTION.
The April sun was shining into two pleasant sitting-rooms, only divided by a partially drawn curtain. Their long windows opened on a wide gravel walk. Beyond this lay a garden, bright with the airy, leafless charm of spring. The grass was grey-green as yet, the borders brown earth, but there were lines and patches of gay spring flowers, and a blithe activity of birds, while the white clouds floated far away in the breezy sky.
Adrian Scarlett, who was a guest in the house, came slowly sauntering along one of the sunshiny paths, between the yellow daffodils, with eyes intent on a handful of printed leaves. Now and again he stopped short, trying a different reading of a line, or twisting his little pointed beard with white fingers, while he questioned some doubtful harmony of syllables. Once he took a pencil from his pocket, and with indignant amusement marked a misprint. After each of these pauses he resumed his dreamy progress, unconscious of any wider horizon than the margin of his page.
Presently his loitering walk brought him to one of the tall, shining windows, and thrusting the little bundle of proofs into his pocket, he unfastened it and stepped in. He found the room untenanted, except by two or three flies, which buzzed in the sunny panes as if summer time had come. A piano stood open, with some music lying on it, and the young man sat down with his back to the curtained opening, began to play, and amused himself for a while in an agreeably discursive fashion. But after a time he felt that he was not alone. The conviction stole upon him gradually, though, as far as he knew, there had been no sound in the further room, and he had previously believed that everybody was out. He glanced over his shoulder more than once, but saw nothing.
"Shall I go and look?" he asked himself. "But it may be somebody I don't know, and don't want to know. Suppose it should be a housemaid come to be hired, and waiting till Mrs. Wilton comes in. What should I say to the housemaid? Or, by the way, the parson said something about Easter offerings yesterday, perhaps this is the clerk or somebody come for them. Perhaps if I go in he'll ask me for an Easter offering. I think I won't risk it. Shall I go into the garden again?"
While he debated the question, he went on playing, feeling that the music justified an apparent unconsciousness of the invisible companionship. The sunshine lighted up the reddish golden tint of his hair and moustache, and the warm flesh colours of his face. Presently his wandering fingers slackened on the keys, and then after a momentary pause of recollection he struck the first notes of a simple air, and played it, with his head thrown back and a smile on his lips.
Near him an old-fashioned mirror hung, a little slanted, on the wall, and as his roving eyes fell on it, a beardless, sharply-cut face appeared in its shadows, motionless and pale, gazing out of the heavy frame with a singular look of eagerness.
Adrian started, but his surprise was so quickly mastered that it was hardly perceptible, and he continued as if nothing had happened, apparently suffering his glances to wander as before, though in reality he watched the dark eyes and sullen brows bent on him from the wall. The face appearing so picturesquely, interested him, and after a moment the interest deepened. As he had before become gradually conscious of the man's presence, so now did a certainty steal over him that he was somehow familiar with the features in the mirror.
The stranger was evidently standing where he might see and not be seen, and he leant on a high-backed chair so that he was partially hidden.