“The young gentleman had better have some supper upstairs, sir, as it’s so late,” he suggested. “I’ll see to it myself.”
“Send him in to me directly they come, Vespasian.”
“Yes, sir.”
He withdrew as quietly as he had entered and Aymer continued to look out at the dark, and think over the change he, of his own will, was about to make in his monotonous existence. He was so lost in thought he did not hear the door open again or realise the “change” was actually an accomplished fact till a half-frightened gasp of “Oh!” caught his ear. He turned as well as he could, unaided.
“Is that you, Christopher?”
The voice was so singularly like Mr. Aston’s that Christopher felt reassured. The dim vastness of the room had frightened him, also he had thought it empty.
“Come over here to me,” said Aymer, holding out his hand, “I can’t come to you.”
Christopher nervously advanced. The brightness of the corridor outside left his eyes confused in this dim light. Aymer suddenly remembered this and turned on a switch. The vague shadowy space was flooded with soft radiance. It was like magic to the small boy.
He was first aware of a gorgeous glint of colouring 18 in a rug flung across the sofa, and then of a man lying on a pile of dull-tinted pillows, a man with red hair and blue eyes, watching him eagerly.
Children as a rule are not susceptible to physical beauty, turning with undeviating instinct to the inner soul of things, with a fine disregard for externals, but Christopher, in this, was rather abnormal. He was very actively alive to outward form.