The next day was a half-holiday. Basil came home at mid-day, and the violin lesson was in the afternoon.
"Am I to have a lesson to-day, mother?" said the boy at luncheon.
"Herr Wildermann is coming," replied his mother, "it would be very rude to let him come for nothing. I will see him first, and then you can go to him for the hour. If he likes to play to you instead of your having a lesson, I do not care. It does not signify now."
The idea would have been very much to Basil's taste, but the tone in which his mother said that "now," made him again feel vexed. He tried to fancy he had cause for being so, for he would not own to the real truth—that he was vexed with himself, and that "himself" deserved it.
"It isn't fair," he repeated half sullenly.
Two hours later he was summoned to the library. Herr Wildermann had come fully a quarter of an hour before—he had heard his ring, and he knew his mother was in the drawing-room waiting for him. When he entered the library he thought at first there was no one there—the violin cases lay open on the table, the music-stand was placed ready as usual; but that was all. No pleasant voice met him with a friendly greeting in broken English and words of kindly encouragement.
"Can Herr Wildermann have gone already?" thought the boy. "He might have waited to say good-bye. What did Sims call me for if he had gone?"
And he was turning to leave the room with a mixture of feelings—irritation and some disappointment, mingled nevertheless with a certain sense of relief, for he had dreaded this last lesson—when a slight, a very slight sound seeming to come from somewhere near the windows, caught his ear. He had come into the room more softly than his wont, and his footfall had made no sound on the thick carpet. The person who was hidden by the curtains had not heard him, had no idea any one was in the room, for through a sort of half-choked sob the child heard two or three confused words which, though uttered in German, were easy enough to understand—
"My mother, ah, my poor mother! How can I tell her? Oh, my mother!"
And startled and shocked, Basil stopped short in the question that was on his lips. "Who's there? Is it you, Blanche?" he had been on the point of saying, when the words caught his ears.