But with the morning, that sober hour when the mind gleams like a sphere of marble in the sun, John Strong’s emotions had cooled discouragingly. He viewed them on rising much as a masker regards the gay clothes he had worn the night before, when wine had cozened him out of his saner self. John Strong went down to breakfast and faced Judith stolidly over the massive oak table. She saw speedily that his mood had changed, and that he was much more the father she had known of old.
Judith, with a sense of emptiness at her heart, left him alone after the meal, to his papers and his pipe. John Strong smoked vigorously, biting the amber mouth-piece, twisting his papers to and fro with the viciousness of a man irritated by his own indecision. Judith, on the watch, saw her father pass out onto the terrace with his favorite dog following at his heels. By instinct she went to the organ that stood in the great gallery above the hall, and began to play some sad, heart-searching melodies religion had drawn from the deeps of the soul. The solemn tones pealed out into the sunlight with a passion that throbbed from the woman’s heart.
John Strong stood still to listen. The lines softened somewhat on his face and a slight tremor played about the dogged mouth. Few men, be they blunt Philistines, are inert to music when the tide of trouble runs deep. John Strong leaned against the balustrading of the terrace, and felt once more the throes of tenderness that sleep had wiped from out his brain.
It was even as he pondered thus, pacing to and fro, then halting for a time as though thought claimed every red spherelet coursing in his blood, that John Strong heard the sound of wheels upon the carriage-drive beyond the garden. The sound skirted the pines and laurels and the three great cedars, and ceased before the entrance on the northern front of the Hall. John Strong, with a shadow as of displeasure upon his face, turned towards the library window that opened upon the terrace.
Then he heard voices, a woman’s and a man’s. A door closed. John Strong halted in the sun. To him from the window came a man-servant, sleek and clean-shaven, treading deferentially towards his master.
“A lady to see you, sir.”
“What name?”
“She would give no name, sir.”
“Hum.”
“I showed her into the library.”