Alresca was flushed. He spoke in short, hurried sentences. Alternately
his tones were passionate and studiously cold. Rosa's lovely
presence, her musical chatter, her gay laughter, filled the room. She
seemed to exhale a delightful and intoxicating atmosphere, which
spread itself through the chamber and enveloped the soul of Alresca.
It was as if he fought against an influence, and then gradually
yielded to the sweetness of it. I observed him closely--for was he not
my patient?--and I guessed that a struggle was passing within him. I
thought of what he had just been saying to me, and I feared lest the
strong will should be scarcely so strong as it had deemed itself.
"You have dined?" asked Alresca.
"I have eaten," she said. "One does not dine after a day's
travelling."
"Won't you have some coffee?"
She consented to the coffee, which Alexis John Smedley duly brought
in, and presently she was walking lightly to and fro, holding the tiny
white cup in her white hand, and peering at the furniture and
bric-a-brac by the light of several candles. Between whiles she
related to Alresca all the news of their operatic acquaintances--how
this one was married, another stranded in Buenos Ayres, another ill
with jealousy, another ill with a cold, another pursued for debt, and
so on through the diverting category.
"And Smart?" Alresca queried at length.
I had been expecting and hoping for this question.
"Oh, Sir Cyril! I have heard nothing of him. He is not a person that
interests me."
She shut her lips tight and looked suddenly across in my direction,
and our eyes met, but she made no sign that I could interpret. If she
had known that the little jewelled dagger lay in the room over her
head!
Her straw hat and thin white veil lay on a settee between two windows.
She picked them up, and began to pull the pins out of the hat. Then
she put the hat down again.
"I must run away soon, Alresca," she said, bending over him, "but
before I leave I should like to go through the whole house. It seems
such a quaint place. Will you let Mr. Foster show me? He shall not be
away from you long."
"In the dark?"
"Why not? We can have candles."
And so, a heavy silver candlestick in either hand, I presently found
myself preceding Rosa up the wide branching staircase of the house.
We had left the owner with a reading-lamp at the head of his couch,
and a copy of "Madame Bovary" to pass the time.
We stopped at the first landing to examine a picture.
"That mysterious complaint that he had, or thought he had, in London
has left him, has it not?" she asked me suddenly, in a low, slightly
apprehensive, confidential tone, moving her head in the direction of
the salon below.