"Are you going upstairs?" asked Briggs, as she paused at the foot of them.
"Yes."
"Which room do you sit in? The drawing-room, or the small yellow room?"
"In my own room."
So then he couldn't go up with her; so then all he could do was to wait till she came out again.
He longed to ask her which was her own room--it thrilled him to hear her call any room in his house her own room--that he might picture her in it. He longed to know if by any happy chance it was his room, for ever after to be filled with her wonder; but he didn't dare. He would find that out later from some one else--Francesca, anybody.
"Then I shan't see you again till dinner?"
"Dinner is at eight," was Scrap's evasive answer as she went upstairs.
He watched her go.
She passed the Madonna, the portrait of Rose Arbuthnot, and the dark-eyed figure he had thought so sweet seemed to turn pale, to shrivel into insignificance as she passed.
She turned the bend of the stairs, and the setting sun, shining through the west window a moment on her face, turned her to glory.
She disappeared, and the sun went out too, and the stairs were dark and empty.
He listened till her footsteps were silent, trying to tell from the sound of the shutting door which room she had gone into, then wandered aimlessly away through the hall again, and found himself back in the top garden.
Scrap from her window saw him there. She saw Lotty and Rose sitting on the end parapet, where she would have liked to have been, and she saw Mr. Wilkins buttonholing Briggs and evidently telling him to story of the oleander tree in the middle of the garden.
Briggs was listening with a patience she thought rather nice, seeing that it was his oleander and his own father's story. She knew Mr. Wilkins was telling him the story by his gestures. Domenico had told it her soon after her arrival, and he had also told Mrs. Fisher, who had told Mr. Wilkins. Mrs. Fisher thought highly of this story, and often spoke of it. It was about a cherrywood walking-stick. Briggs's father had thrust this stick into the ground at that spot, and said to Domenico's father, who was then the gardener, "Here we will have an oleander." And Briggs's father left the stick in the ground as a reminder to Domenico's father, and presently--how long afterwards nobody remembered--the stick began to sprout, and it was an oleander.