It was the evening before, and they were all assembled. Horace, coffee-cup in hand, leant in his favorite attitude against the chimney-piece. He was troubled and depressed, repulsed Mrs. Middleton's smiling attempts to draw him out, and added very little to the general conversation. "Sulky" was Mr. Thorne's verdict.
Percival was copying music for Sissy. She stood near him, bending forward to catch the full light of the lamp to aid her in picking up a dropped stitch in her aunt's knitting. Close by them sat Godfrey Hammond in an easy-chair.
He was a man of three or four and forty, by no means handsome, but very well satisfied with his good figure and his keen, refined features. He wanted color, his closely-cut hair was sandy, his eyes were of the palest gray, and his eyebrows faintly marked. He was slightly underhung, and did not attempt to hide the fact, wearing neither beard nor moustache. His face habitually wore a questioning expression.
Godfrey Hammond never lamented his want of good looks, but he bitterly regretted the youth which he had lost. His regret seemed somewhat premature. His fair complexion showed little trace of age, he had never known what illness was, and men ten or fifteen years younger might have envied him his slight active figure. But in truth the youth which he regretted was a dream. It was that legendary Golden Age which crowns the whole world with far-off flowers and fills hearts with longings for its phantom loveliness. The present seemed to Hammond hopeless, commonplace and cold, a dull procession of days tending downward to the grave. He was thus far justified in his regrets, that if his youth were as full of beauty and enthusiasm as he imagined it, he was very old indeed.
"What band are they going to have to-morrow, Percival?" asked Sissy.
"I did hear, but I forget. Stay, they gave me a programme when I was at the bookseller's this afternoon." He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of papers and letters. "It was a pink thing—I thought you would like it: what has become of it, I wonder?"
As he turned the papers over a photograph slipped out of its envelope. Sissy saw it: "Percival, is that some one's carte? May I look?"
"What!" said Godfrey Hammond, sticking a glass in his eye and peering short-sightedly, "Percy taking to carrying photographs about with him! Wonders will never cease! What fair lady may it be?—Come, man, let us have a look at her."
Percival colored very slightly, and then, as it were, contradicted his blush by tossing the envelope and its contents across to Godfrey: "No fair lady. Ask Sissy what she thinks of him."
"Why, it's young Lisle!" said Hammond. Mr. Thorne looked up with sudden interest.