Richard Jeffray had brought many books, pictures, and curios from abroad, having been plentifully supplied with money by his father, who had been something of an antiquary and a man of taste. The old library, with its towering shelves and wainscoted walls, held the treasures that Richard had transmitted from time to time from Italy. Here were Etruscan and Greek vases; boxes of coins, rings, and charms; fragments of statuary and of mosaic. The gathering of engraved stones had formed Jeffray’s most extravagant hobby. Egyptian scarabæi, gnostic charms, classical cameos and intaglios, mostly forged, were packed away in a satinwood bureau. Jeffray boasted a strong-box full of sapphires, emeralds, garnets, opals, chalcedonies, sards, jaspers and other stones. Old Peter Gladden had set two lighted candles on the escritoire near the window. A manuscript lay open on the writing flap, the manuscript of an epic that Richard had been laboring at for months. It was conceived in the Miltonic style, and dealt with the descent of Christ into Hades.
The Lady Letitia was yawning over the love affairs of Sophia Weston when her nephew joined her in the drawing-room. She roused herself, sat up stiffly in her chair, and held up her fan to keep the heat of the fire from her painted face. The dowager regarded Richard with the solemnity of a witch of Endor. Jeffray had learned to dread these nightly interviews. Aunt Letitia was forever flinging her sarcasms at his head, and being a sensitive and easy-tempered youth he had never presumed to flout her in her pedagogic utterances.
It was evident to Richard that the dowager had been meditating as usual over his youthful eccentricities. She looked more pompous and austere than usual, like some hoary catechist ready to hear the callow creed of youth. The wind was moaning over the great house, tossing the sombre boughs of the cedars that towered above the lawns. The windows rattled; every chimney was full of sound. Jeffray flung more wood upon the fire, and sat down opposite his aunt with a look of melancholy resignation on his face.
“Richard,” said the old lady, suddenly, tilting her red beak and fixing her eyes upon her nephew.
Jeffray roused himself as from a reverie.
“You are often at Hardacre House.”
“Am I, Aunt Letitia?”
“Often enough, Richard, to suggest the attraction to me.”
Jeffray turned and watched the fire. The light played upon his sallow face and melancholy eyes, his plain black coat, the white ruffles falling down upon the small and refined hands. There was an air of picturesqueness about him that even Aunt Letitia recognized, despite the fact that she preferred a mischievous dandy to a book-befogged scholar.
“Richard.”