“I am very busy, my dear,” he said, somewhat pointedly. “Very busy indeed. Perhaps you would like to entertain Mr. Montella below? This is my workroom, you know.”
“Yes. I came up here because Mrs. Lowther has gone to bed with a headache, and I was feeling a wee bit lonesome.” She smiled. “Will you come down with me, Mr. Montella? I would like to hear what you think of my latest attempts at verse.”
He rose with alacrity, and holding out his hand to the Earl, turned on him a questioning glance. Lord Torrens rewarded him with a look and gesture which implied approval. Then he continued washing his prints.
Montella was foremost in descending the spiral staircase, in order to assist Lady Patricia down the final steps. Arrived at the base, they descended the grand staircase together, and made their way to the library, which was Lady Patricia’s favourite room. Here she was wont to spend many a long hour in silent communion with men and women long passed away; for books were her counsellors and friends, and supplied the companionship which, owing to her father’s idiosyncrasies, she was denied. Here, too, she wrote the lyrics and sonnets in which her poetic instinct found its outlet. From her earliest childhood she had possessed the happy gift of composing verse.
She went to her desk and fetched some sheets of manuscript.
“I am glad Mrs. Lowther has gone to bed,” she remarked, as she gave them to him. “She always laughs at what she calls my attempts to scale Parnassus, but I know that you won’t laugh, because you understand.”
“The good lady has not a poetic soul,” he said, as he ran his eye down the page. “This stanza appears to be very promising, Lady Pat. May I take the MS. home with me to study when I am quiet and undisturbed?”
She consented readily, and rolling up the sheets, he placed them carefully in his pocket. Then, closing the door, he began on the subject on which all his thoughts were set. With a glad light in his eyes, and eagerness in his voice, he told her of his love.
It caused her no surprise; indeed, why should it? She had invested Lionel Montella with a poetic idealism almost from the first day of their acquaintance. She admired the race from which he sprang, and which seemed to surround him with a halo of romance: she liked to see the verve which leapt into his eyes when he spoke of the ancestors who had been so cruelly wronged. More than this, she loved the man himself; therefore his declaration seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Nevertheless there was a mist in her eyes as she responded to his confession. She knew that he was not a man who was easily impressed by a woman’s personality, so that to have so greatly stirred his heart’s emotions was to have accomplished something indeed. She listened to his sweet nothings with her own heart beating in response, with her face upturned, and love’s ardour in her eyes. And so the moments sped on—moments to be remembered in eternity—until the chiming of a clock recalled them to the prosaicism of life.