To this Lady Pell apparently found nothing to reply.
For the last few minutes, the sound of music had reached them from the drawing-room, but now came a burst of song, so clear, so sweet, so penetrating, that they both listened, spell-bound. Not a word passed between them till the song had come to an end. Then Sir Gilbert said: “I have not enjoyed anything so much for a long time. Miss Thursby is not only possessed of an exquisite organ, but she has been taught how to use it to the best advantage. She sings with taste, brio and expression. In her, Louisa, you have evidently secured a treasure.”
“She’s a dear, good girl—which is far better than having an exquisite organ, as you term it—and if she were my own daughter could scarcely love her more than I do.”
“The sun has set, and the evening is growing chilly; suppose we go indoors. Miss Thursby must sing to us again.”
Miss Thursby was only too pleased to find that her song had afforded Sir Gilbert so much pleasure, and, at his request, she sang again and again, Luigi standing by her meanwhile and turning over her music. A spell was upon him, under the influence of which he felt as if he scarcely knew himself. Emotions and feelings were at work within him to which he had heretofore been a stranger. He caught flying gleams of something higher and better than existence had yet revealed to him. He thought of “Miss J.” and scorned himself for his fatuity.
Outside on the terrace it was grey dusk. The long windows were still wide open. A single lamp had been lighted in the drawing-room, which shone on the two figures at the piano. In the semi-obscurity which shrouded the rest of the room, sat Sir Gilbert and Lady Pell, dim figures faintly outlined. Miss Thursby, at Sir Gilbert’s request, was singing “Robin Adair.” She had just begun the second verse when all in the room were startled by three or four piercing shrieks following quickly on each other, and evidently proceeding from someone on the terrace. Ethel stopped singing on the moment and sprang to her feet, as did Lady Pell. Sir Gilbert, with surprising agility for a man of his years, made a dash for the open window, followed more leisurely by Luigi. But scarcely had the Baronet set foot on the terrace before a female figure almost literally stumbled into his arms. So taken aback was he that he could only splutter out: “What! what! Who are you? What’s amiss?”
At the sound of his voice the girl—who was none other than Bessie Ogden, the under-housemaid—started back as if she had been shot, and although she was shaking in every limb and the pallor of her face was discernible through the dusk, she contrived to bob a little curtsey. “Oh, sir,” she said, “I humbly beg your pardon. I had no idea it was you I run against, but I was so frightened that I quite lost my head.”
“But what was it that frightened you?” demanded Sir Gilbert, who had recognised the girl, a little impatiently.
Then Bessie, half crying and still trembling from the shock she had undergone, contrived to tell her tale. It had been her “afternoon out,” and in coming back she had taken a short cut across the terrace (which she had no business to do), and when opposite the drawing-room windows had been confronted by a tall, dark, hooded figure, which had appeared suddenly from behind a clump of evergreens, and, a few seconds later, had vanished as mysteriously as it had come.
By this time Trant and Mrs. Burton, followed by the rest of the servants, had appeared on the scene, drawn thither by Bessie’s shrieks.