The following week Evadne went home, and as soon as she was settled at As-You-Like-It, she seemed to relapse once more into her former state of apathy. I saw her day after day as I passed, sitting sewing in the wide west window above the holly hedge; and so long as she was left alone she seemed to be content; but I began to notice at this time that any interruption at her favourite occupation did not please her. The summer heat, the scent of flowers streaming through open windows, the song of birds, the level landscape, here vividly green with the upspringing aftermath, there crimson and gold where the poppies gleamed amongst the ripening corn—all such sweet sensuous influences she looked out upon lovingly, and enjoyed them—so long as she was left alone. On hot afternoons, Diavolo would go and lie at her feet sometimes, with a cushion under his head; and him she tolerated; but only, I am sure, because he always fell asleep.
I had to go to As-You-Like-It one day to transact some business with Colonel Colquhoun, and when we had done he asked me to go up into the drawing room with him. "Come, and I'll show you a pretty picture," he said.
It was a pretty picture. They had both fallen asleep on that occasion. It was a torrid day outside, but the deep bay where they were was cool and shady. The windows were wide open, the outside blinds were drawn down low enough to keep out the glare, but not so far as to hide the view. Behind Evadne was a stand of flowers and foliage plants. Diavolo was lying on the floor in his favourite attitude with a black satin cushion under his head, and was, with his slender figure, refined features, thick, curly, fair hair, and fine transparent skin, slightly flushed by the heat, a perfect specimen of adolescent grace and beauty. He looked like a young lover lying at the feet of his lady. Evadne was sitting in a low easy chair, with a high back, against which her head was resting. Half her face was concealed by a fan of white ostrich feathers which she held in her left hand, and the moment I looked at her the haunting certainty of having seen her in exactly that position once before recurred to me. She was looking well that afternoon. Her glossy dark brown hair showed bright as bronze against the satin background of the chair. She was dressed in a gown of silver gray cashmere lined with turquoise blue silk, which showed between the folds; cool colours of the best shade to set off the ivory whiteness of her skin.
Colonel Colquhoun considered the group meditatively. "She keeps her looks," he observed in an undertone; "and Diavolo's catching her up."
I looked at him inquiringly.
"She's six or eight years older than he is, you know," he explained; "but you wouldn't think it now."
I wondered what he had in his mind.
"Times are changing," he proceeded. "Now, when I was a lad, if a lady had liked me as well as Evadne likes that boy, I'd have taken advantage of her preference."
"Not if the lady had been of her stamp," I said drily.
"Well, true for you," he acknowledged. "But it isn't the lady only in this case. It's that young sybarite himself. He's as particular as she is. He said the other day at mess—it was a guest night, and there was a big dinner on, and somebody proposed 'Wine and Women' for a toast, but he wouldn't drink it: 'Oh, spare me,' he said, in that slow way he has, something like his father's; 'Wine and women, as you take them, are things as coarse in the way of pleasure as pork and porter are for food.' We asked him then to give us his own ideas of pleasure; but he said he didn't think anybody there was educated up to them, even sufficiently to understand them!—and he wasn't joking altogether, either," Colonel Colquhoun concluded.