to the drawing-room? I am sorry we did not know it was so late."
"It is our fault; we are disgracefully early," put in Captain Dering. "I told Carlyon--" then he paused, feeling curiously at a loss before the girl's look of stolid gravity.
"Perhaps your watch is too fast," she suggested, "and then my guardian likes to go by the sun. He says it never needs winding up. But I think it is inconvenient, when everybody else has a watch. It is always better to do as other people do."
Her voice was very sweet and full; but a country-bred accent spoilt its beauty, and brought a grimace to Captain Dering's face, as he and his companion dutifully followed the speaker up one of the curved flights of steps, which led from the plinth to a wide loggia on the second storey. Like the room seen through its arches, this was lavishly decorated with fragments of looking-glass fashioned into flowing designs with gilt stucco. The afternoon sun, at this height shining full into the loggia, made it a veritable star chamber.
"What a charming place," went on Captain Dering in his best manner. "Doesn't it remind you of the Arabian Nights, Carlyon?"
A sudden vague surprise and interest came to the girl's face, lightening it infinitely.
"Have you read the Alif Laila?" she asked. "My moonshi brought it--I have to learn Urdu, you know, because my guardian thinks I ought to be able to speak to the people, as he does--and I wanted to read it, because it is my name, you see--Laila--it means 'night,' I believe--but my guardian did not wish it. He gave me the 'Mirror of Virtue' instead. It is a very, very long--"
Her almost childish garrulity ceased in a faint flush over the ivory of her face, and she reverted to her lesson, and her indifference--"The other people will be here directly; but they will come from the city, across the tunnel, and go straight into the drawing-room. Would you like to come in there, or stay here?"
"Oh! stay here, please!" said Vincent, desperately. The young woman was getting on his nerves.
"Then perhaps you would like to try the piano?" persisted Miss Bonaventura. "My guardian has it brought out here on Wednesday afternoons, because it sounds well among the arches. Will you try it?"
Her hand--it was ivory also, Vincent observed, and had long filbert-shaped nails--held the cover of the keyboard open stolidly; and Lance Carlyon, feeling a bit desperate also, said appealingly:--
"Do, Dering. He is a nailer at the piano, I assure you, Miss Bonaventura, and he sings too."
"So my guardian--" she began, when Vincent's patience gave way and, with a perfect devil of exasperation roused in him, he sat down on the music-stool and with a crash burst into a naughty little love song he had picked up at Brindisi on the way out. He did it simply to soothe himself; so, to do him justice, he nearly fell off the music-stool in horror when, at the refrain of the second verse, a very full round mezzo-soprano joined in it with a verve and abandon far exceeding his own.
He scarcely knew whether to apologize, or go on; but Miss Bonaventura apparently had no doubts. She finished with a gay little staccato note which would have made her fortune at a music hall, and then turned to the accompanist with a smile which showed an absolutely flawless set of teeth. "What funny words; but I like them, and the tune too. What is it called? I should like to get it and sing it to my guardian."
Vincent, who had begun a stammering regret that he had not remembered her nationality, altered his phrase, with a sense of relief, to "You know Italian very well, I suppose, Miss Bonaventura?"
She returned to her indifference immediately. "My guardian and I speak it. He loves Italy and the Italians. He knew my grandmother there. She was a princess; but he never speaks of her, so I don't know very much about it. Only Mother at the convent said that my guardian--"
She was off, gaily, on the childishly confidential tack again, when the sight of someone coming up the stairs made her veer towards dignity once more. "There is my guardian," she said; "he is very sorry to have kept you waiting."
Evidently this was the last bit of her lesson, for she closed the piano with great decision.
The figure which came slowly towards them was that of a very old man, yet one older, by many years, than his looks. For he was still straight, save for a slight stoop in the neck; but this, by the backward poise of the head thus made necessary to enable his brown eyes to meet all things, after their habit, squarely, if softly, gave him an air of alertness. He was dressed in an ordinary black soutane, but wore a fine white embroidered muslin skull-cap, such as natives wear, instead of a black one. His grey hair showed, still luxuriant, beneath it; and the wide sash of faded lilac silk, with tasselled ends, which was tied in a bow about his waist, set off his still slim and still graceful figure.
"I hope my little girl has been doing the honours properly," he began, pausing a pace or two from the young men, and not offering to shake hands; but his voice was a welcome in itself, and had that nameless cachet of absolute good breeding which makes offence impossible. There was a slight hesitancy in it too, now and again, which was overcome by a look that took the listener into its confidence, and appealed for friendly forbearance--"but she is only just back from school at Calcutta, and the good nuns did not see much company, did they, Laila?" Then in an undertone of solicitude he added, in Italian, "Didst tell them, cara mia?--didst remember it all?"
Laila Bonaventura looked at him with a faint resentment. "I think so, guardian," she replied, in English. "Didn't I?"
The last came with such swift, almost savage, challenge of voice and eyes, that Vincent Dering, the recipient, felt glad of the diversion caused by the arrival, through the drawing-room, of some more guests to claim the attention of the host and hostess, and so leave him in peace.
"I say, that girl has got splendid hair, hasn't she?" he said in an undertone to Lance, as they stood a little apart, watching the new comers.
"That tall one, you mean--don't admire it. Puts me in mind of that devil of a chestnut who nearly killed me at polo; a chestnut with white stockings; awfully handy, but--"
He paused as Father Ninian came up to them. "You can scarcely know any of your neighbours as yet, Captain Dering," began the old man with the ceremony of a past age, "so perhaps you will give me the privilege of presenting you to some of our good mission ladies."
"Thanks," replied Vincent, hastily. "But I see my old friend, Mrs. Walsall Smith, coming in. I must just go and shake hands. But I'm sure Carlyon--"
Lance shot a perfectly pathetic glance after his Captain, who moved off to meet a delicate-looking fair woman who at that moment came in with Dr. Dillon; the latter taken possession of and monopolized by an exceedingly pretty child of five, who had evidently inherited her mother's fragility.
"Delighted, I'm sure," murmured Lance, following his leader dejectedly.
"Miss Erda Shepherd, Mr. Lancelot--I am right, am I not--Carlyon?"
It was the tall girl with the red-brown hair, of course. She had bronze eyebrows, too, and bronze eyes--nice ones. He saw so much as he made his bow, while Father Ninian stood looking first at the girl, then at the young man; and as he looked his fine old hands were clasped as if they held something very precious. It was a habit of his.
"I hope you will like each other," he said in his kind old voice; and then, ere he moved away, his hands fell apart for an instant as if giving something. "Peace go with you, my children," he said with a smile.
Lance
