The professor's heart sinks a little as he sees his sister rise and loosen the laces round the girl's pretty, slender throat, begging her to begin to feel at home at once. Alas! He has deliberately given up his ward! _His_ ward! Is she any longer his? Has not the great world claimed her now, and presently will she not belong to it? So lovely, so sweet she is, will not all men run to snatch the prize?--a prize, bejewelled too, not only by Nature, but by that gross material charm that men call wealth. Well, well, he has done his best for her. There was, indeed, nothing else left to do.
"The sun is all about the world we see, The breath and strength of very Spring; and we Live, love, and feed on our own hearts."
The lights are burning low in the conservatory, soft perfumes from the many flowers fill the air. From beyond--somewhere--(there is a delicious drowsy uncertainty about the where)--comes the sound of music, soft, rhymical, and sweet. Perhaps it is from one of the rooms outside--dimly seen through the green foliage--where the lights are more brilliant, and forms are moving. But just in here there is no music save the tinkling drip, drip of the little fountain that plays idly amongst the ferns.
Lady Baring is at home to-night, and in the big, bare rooms outside dancing is going on, and in the smaller rooms, tiny tragedies and comedies are being enacted by amateurs, who, oh, wondrous tale! do know their parts and speak them, albeit no stage "proper" has been prepared for them. Perhaps that is why stage-fright is not for them--a stage as big as "all the world" leaves actors very free.
But in here--here, with the dainty flowers and dripping fountains, there is surely no thought of comedy or tragedy. Only a little girl gowned all in white, with snowy arms and neck, and diamonds gittering in the soft masses of her waving hair. A happy little girl, to judge by the soft smile upon her lovely lips, and the gleam in her dark eyes. Leaning back in her seat in the dim, cool recesses of the conservatory, amongst the flowers and the greeneries, she looks like a little nymph in love with the silence and the sense of rest that the hour holds.
"I am so sorry you are not dancing," says her companion, leaning towards her. His regret is evidently genuine, indeed, to Hardinge the evening is an ill-spent one that precludes his dancing with Perpetua Wynter.