"Now I am going to show you some Thornhirst pictures and some older Athelstans that are in the hall and the dining-room, and a portrait of my mother that I have in my own smoking-room."
Antony made the most interesting guide. There was something amusing and to the point about all his comments. I soon knew the different characteristics of each member of the family. One or two, especially of the Thornhirsts, are wonderfully like him--the same level, dark eyebrows and firm mouths.
"This is my sanctum," he said, at last, opening a door down a corridor, and we went into a large room with a lower ceiling than the rest of the apartments I had been into. It is panelled with cedar-wood also and sparely hung with old prints. A delicious smell of burning pine-logs again greeted me. The thick, silk curtains were drawn. The lamps were softly shaded. An old dog of the same family as the three knights basked before the fire. It was all cosey and homelike.
"Oh! this is a nice room, too!" I exclaimed.
"I spend a good deal of time here. One grows to like one"s rooms."
His mother"s portrait hangs over the fireplace, a charming face, whose beauty is not even disguised by the hideous fashions of 1870, when it was painted.
"She died when I was in Russia," said Antony.
My eyes fell on the mantel-piece. The narrow ledge held three photographs, one of a man, one of Lady Tilchester, and the centre one--an amateur production, evidently--of a little girl with bare feet, putting one fat toe into a stream, her hat hanging down her back, and her face bent down looking at the water.
"What a dear little picture," I said. "Who is that?"
"Oh, that is the Tilchester child, Muriel Harley," he said, carelessly. "We snap-shotted her paddling in the burn in Scotland a year or two ago. Come, it is dressing-time. I must send you up-stairs." And then, as we left the room, "You look so comfortable in that tea-gown! Don"t bother to change," he said.
"Why deprive me of displaying to you the splendors I brought over on purpose?" I said, gayly, as I ran up the broad steps.
XIV
I do not think there can be a more agreeable form of entertainment than a _tete-a-tete_ dinner, provided your companion is sympathetic.
Anyway, to me this will always be one of the golden hours in my life to look back upon.
Never had Antony been so attractive. Every sentence was well expressed, and only when one came to think of them afterwards, did one discover their subtle flattery.
By the time the servants had finally left the room I felt like a purring cat whose fur has been all stroked the right way--at peace with the world.
The dinner had been exquisite, but I was too excited to feel hungry.
"Comtesse," said Antony, looking at the clock, "there is one good hour before the arrivals by the last train can possibly get here. Shall we spend it in the library or the drawing-room?" He did not suggest his own sitting-room.
"The library. It is more cosey."
As he held the door open for me, there was an expression in his face which again caused me the ridiculous sensation I have spoken of so often. I suddenly realized that life at some moments is worth living.
Perhaps grandmamma and the Marquis were right after all, and these glimpses of paradise are the compensations.
"Will you play to me, Comtesse?" Antony said when we got to the library and he opened the piano. "I shall be selfish and sit in a comfortable chair and listen to you."
I am not a great musician, but grandmamma always said my playing gave her pleasure. The music makes me feel--so, perhaps, that is why it makes others feel, too.
I played on, it seemed to me, a long time. Then, after some tender bits of Greig, running from one to another, I suddenly stopped. The music had been talking too much to me. It said, over and over again: "Ambrosine, you love this man. He is beginning to absorb the whole of your life." And, again: "Life is short. This happiness will be over in a few moments. Live while you may."
"Why do you stop, Comtesse?" asked Antony, in a moved voice.
"I--do not know."
He rose and came and leaned on the piano, I felt--oh! I had never been so agitated in my life. At all costs he must not say anything to me, nothing that I should have to stop, nothing to break this beautiful dream--
"Oh! do you not hear the sound of carriage-wheels?" I exclaimed, in a half voice.
It broke the spell.
Antony walked to the window. He pulled the curtains aside and opened a shutter to look upon the night.
"It is the thickest fog I ever remember," he said. "I doubt if the brougham, which put up at the station, could get back here, even if they have come by the last train."
"Oh! of course they have come!" I said, unsteadily.
He did not answer, but carefully closed the shutter again and drew the curtains. I went to the fireplace and began caressing one of the dogs.
My hands were cold as ice. Antony lost a little of his _sang-froid_.
He picked up a paper-knife and put it down again.
It seemed to me my heart was thumping so loudly that he must hear it where he stood.
We both listened intently. Neither of us spoke. Eleven o"clock struck.
The butler entered the room.
"Bilsworth has managed to get here on one of the horses, Sir Antony, and he says the last train is in, and no one arrived by it."
"Very well," said Antony, calmly. "You can shut up for the night."
And the butler went out, softly closing the door behind him.
XV
Before I opened my eyes next morning in my beautiful room a telegram came from Augustus--a long telegram written the night before, telling me that it was impossible to penetrate the fog that night, and I was to come up and join him at once in London, as he had just decided to go to the war with his Yeomanry. He could not keep out of it longer, as all his brother officers had volunteered, so he had felt obliged to do so, too. They were to start in less than three weeks.
"I shall go by the ten-o"clock train," I told McGreggor, as I scribbled my reply. "I must get up at once. Ask for my breakfast to be brought up here."
I was dressed by nine o"clock and sipping my chocolate.
The daintiness of the old Dresden china equipage pleased me, forced itself upon my notice in spite of the deep preoccupation of my mind.
An exquisite bunch of fresh roses lay on the tray, and a note from Antony--only a few words--hoping I had slept well and saying the brougham would be ready for me at half-past nine, and that he also was going to London.
McGreggor had left the room. Oh! am I very wicked? I kissed the writing before I threw the paper in the fire!
And so Augustus is going to the war, after all. It must have been some very strong influence which persuaded him to volunteer, he who hated the very thought.