“If I sing, it will be to please myself, and I shall probably not please any one else.”
Ember came forward and opened the piano. He bent as he did so, and said a few words very low. She answered him.
Henry, left by the fireside with Jane, leaned forward conversationally, the last Punch in his hand.
“This is a good cartoon,” he said. “Have you seen it, Miss Molloy?”
And as she bent to look at the page, he added in that low, effaced tone which does not carry a yard:
“Which room have they given you?”
“I like the line,” said Jane in her clear voice, “and that very black shadow.” Then, in an almost soundless breath—“The end room, south wing.”
“Don’t go to bed,” said Henry. “Wonderful how they keep it up, week after week. I mean to say, it must put you off your stroke like anything, knowing you’ve got to come right up to time like that.”
“Your department doesn’t work by the calendar, then? You don’t have to bother about results?”
Ember strolled back to his favourite place by the fire as he spoke, and Lady Heritage broke into a resounding chord. She played what Henry afterwards described as “an infernal pandemonium of a thing.” It appeared to be in several keys at once, and marched from one riot of discord to another until it ended with a strident crash which set up a humming jangle of vibrations.