“I suppose, now, that you are pretty well acquainted with London,” was his next remark. He was beginning to feel more at his ease.
Ethel shook her head. “My knowledge of London is very limited indeed. I spent a fortnight there once with my aunts, but that is the only time I have been there. I was brought up in a small provincial town, and know very little of the world beyond its narrow limits.”
“I hope Lady Pell intends making a long stay at the Chase,” he presently ventured to remark, “as, in that case, we shall also have the pleasure of your society, Miss Thursby. It’s precious dull here, I can tell you. My grandfather goes nowhere, and only by rare chance does a visitor find his way to the Chase. Of course one can get through the day pretty well, but the evenings are awful. Most nights grandad has his secretary fellow to play chess, or backgammon with him, and there’s poor me left without a soul to talk to. It’s something cruel, I can assure you.”
There was quite a pathetic note in Luigi’s voice as he spoke the last words. Having once begun to touch on the subject of his own imaginary grievances, he could be fluent enough.
“But no doubt you have resources within yourself, Mr. Clare, sufficient to cause the time not to hang too heavily on your hands. Books and music, for instance, and—and probably other things.”
“I don’t know so much about that, Miss Thursby. I’m not much of a reading man, not built that way, don’t you know. And one can’t be everlastingly jingling by oneself on the piano; besides, Sir Gilbert wouldn’t stand it when he’s deep in a game of chess. No; what I do is to get through an awful amount of yawning, mixed with a little bit of drawing, for which—the drawing, not the yawning—there are people who say I have something of a gift. All the same it’s inf—uncommonly slow work, Miss Thursby, I give you my word.”
“Is it asking too much to be allowed to see your drawings, Mr. Clare?” queried Ethel. “Not that I have the slightest pretension to set myself up as a critic,” she made haste to add, “being all but destitute of technical knowledge, and only able to appreciate a work of art of any kind in so far as it satisfies my conceptions of the beautiful, or appeals to my sense of humour, or pathos, or teaches me something which I feel it is good for me that I should know.”
Luigi felt that the conversation was getting a little beyond him, so he contented himself with saying: “Oh, my sketches are quite at your service, you know; but I give you my word that you will find them awful rubbish.”
After dinner, the evening was so sunny and pleasant, that Sir Gilbert caused a couple of lounging chairs to be placed on the terrace, where he and Lady Pell stationed themselves, ostensibly to watch the sunset, but in reality that they might enjoy a tête-à-tête without any risk of being overheard by the young people. At dinner their talk had mostly concerned itself with reminiscences of people whom they had known when they were forty years younger.
Meanwhile, Ethel, with Luigi standing by her, his hands deep in his pockets, was going through the latter’s portfolio of drawings.