“Tut—tut!” quoth the gentleman, soothingly.
“Did you hear what the girl is thumbing out?”
“No, on my honor.”
“That song of Sutcliffe’s which the Westminster choir-master set to music! Such things must run in the girl’s brain.”
A frown gathered upon my lord’s debonair and buxom face.
“You are always looking for the snake under the stone, Nan. Why should we worry over such a flick of the memory?”
“Why? Why, indeed! Except that some shadow seems always to strike across my face. You—you should understand.”
He drew a deep breath, and expelled it slowly with a hissing sound between his closed teeth.
“If you believe in omens, Nan, we must transfer the sinister side of it to Captain Jack. Pah! what do either of the young fools know? They will help each other to forget every one and everything on earth save their two sweet selves. That is one of the advantages of the disease. What are parents when a lover appears? He has already roused the girl to some show of spirits, and for that, Nan, you should be thankful.”
There was, however, something false and forced in the energy of his cynicism, and in the flippant way he tossed the past aside. Yet even when they returned to the salon on the other side of the house, the faint, husky voice of the harpsichord followed them like a voice from another world.