"What stacks of photographs you have. Cleverly arranged too, I see: pupils in evening dress from twenty to twenty-five on the piano; pupils with long hair and pinafores on the mantelshelf with the pipe-racks; mammas in velvet and fur behind the fern-pots. Ah, the workings of the musical mind are most subtle. Good-bye; I suppose I shall see you down at the Manor on Saturday?"
"I hope to run down for the week end; I have not seen my people for months. And perhaps I may have an opportunity of converting you yet! Is your carriage here?"
"Who is she?" asked some one, when the musician had followed her into the hall.
"Don't ask me, dear," said Mrs. Reginald, with her habitual smile, "I am quite unacquainted with the person."
"Poor Mr. Raleigh, I quite felt for him," said another; "but how chivalrous he is! No one would have suspected how much her impertinence was torturing his sensitive nature."
"I should not call her impertinent myself," said Mrs. Reginald, charitably, "I think it is merely want of breeding. Provincial, I should say. Some friend of the family perhaps; I have heard--that is to say, Mr. Digby has often talked to me of his home in the country. Strange that so many of our greatest men should have come up from the provinces. Take--take Händel, for instance, or even Charlotte Brontë."
"What a pretty girl, Mr. Raleigh; who is she?" asked the first speaker, when the musician returned, with rather a conscious look on his face.
"Ah, yes, charming, isn't she? She is Lady Joan Relton, the Relton Court family, you know; came into the title unexpectedly through the death of a great-uncle. Not much wealth, I believe; no doubt, all the money has been squandered by her worthless and immoral ancestors," he added, remembering his prophet's mantle in time to justify his momentary interest in the aristocracy. "Will you give us another song, Mrs. Routh?"
And, the room having been cleared, as it were, of the heretical element, the atmosphere of music once more settled down solidly on that studio in the West End.
Squire Raleigh was a philanthropist. But philanthropy in town is a costly amusement, and Squire Raleigh had a large family, whose claims could not comfortably be ignored in favor of charitable institutions, although a philanthropist with a love for mankind cannot be expected to do as much for his own children as an ordinary domesticated egoist. Nevertheless, after the endowment of an orphan asylum, and the failure of a Liberal newspaper speculation, and the gift of a public park to the people had been followed by the reduction of his income to one-third of its original value, the vigorous reformer yielded to the persuasions of his sons and his lawyers and retired to his country estate, with a knighthood, a troublesome liver, and a firm resolve to get to the bottom of the land question.