As Fauntleroy's fancy lightened from the theme he followed, his eye pursued a cloud across the sky, and falling, lay upon his mother's face. He ceased a moment in terrible dismay, then starting to his feet, looked back at the portrait on the wall, lest she had stolen out of her frame, mastered by all the charm of the old house. But as quietly as ever, in the Greek cap of vivid scarlet and gold zequins falling from her hair, she looked through her prison-door. Again his fascinated eyes sprung back to the white face pressed against the vacant panes. It was all quicker than thought, and hardly a minute had elapsed when he comprehended it. If his mother had been Solomon, he would have expected summary chastisement; as it was, he resumed his seat and played with his best execution the very piece upon which she had laid her ban. He fancied himself to have accomplished a fine revenge, but silly child! his mother no more understood his meaning than did the portrait, for of the identity between what he played and what the sheet contained his unskilled senses were ignorant. Hardly had he struck the closing chord, when the door behind him opened, and a tall gentleman, in flowing robes and with long, dark hair, entered, bearing a light, which the draught at once extinguished.
'What does this mean?' he asked in apparent amazement, first of the child and then of the white face beyond. The mother pushed up the sash.
'Sir,' she cried, 'he is my son; and having been forbidden by me, when Madame Fardeau was living, to touch this piano, has escaped from me in the night! Send him here to me, I implore you.'
'Is this so?' asked the stranger doubtingly, and with that strange manner which, however perfectly one speaks the tongue, always indicates the foreigner.
'Yes, it is so!' answered Fauntleroy stoutly, as his mother's words were impugned. 'Mother never knew of my coming till to-night; and where's the harm?'
'Oh! yes,' answered Fauntleroy, into whose nature there had not been instilled sufficient awe of any one to make it seem to him worth while to tell a lie.
'Oh! a great while ago; a great many years, I should think.'
'A great many years, Fauntleroy!' exclaimed his mother, while the gentleman moved uneasily as she spoke. 'Madame Fardeau has not been dead a great many years. You are not a great many years old!'