"Pray pardon this ungenteel summons, my dear Miss Courteen, but if you would not consider yourself compromised by such an adventure, I should be vastly honoured by your inspection of some proper new prints which have fallen into my hands."
Miss Courteen was overwhelmed by this invitation. What could she do but murmur assent?
The Beau, with a delightfully suave gesture, hurried to open the front door for Miss Courteen who tripped up the dazzling white steps, all swansdown and blushes.
Mr. Ripple begged her to follow him upstairs to the drawing-room and be seated before the fire.
It was a fine high room of good proportions, with three large sash-windows and a wrought-iron balcony running along the breadth of the house. The walls were panelled and painted white, and the floor was stained and varnished to a glaze of immense brilliancy. The rugs scattered about it were Aubusson, of rare hues in fawn and puce and faded lavender and old rose interwoven with queer dead greens. There were several prints on the walls, mostly after Watteau and Fragonard. The whole room wore the indescribable air that is only to be found in the house of a bachelor of comfortable means, good taste and a certain age. There was no trace of a woman's hand in its arrangement, and yet one felt that the owner, through long seclusion from the other sex, had softened towards it with the years until, secure at last, he was able to admit a feminine cirrhus into the limpid and rarefied air of his remote celibacy.
Phyllida, as she watched the firelight ripple in orange wavelets across the surface of the blue and white Dutch tiles set on either side of the hob, wondered what the Beau meant by this sudden invitation.
Just then he begged to be excused for a moment while he fetched the portfolio containing his new purchase.
She heard the door gently closed and looked round the room.
How tall and white it was, just like Mr. Ripple's hand, smooth and white and exquisitely shaped. Outside, the grey weather mellowed the ivory of the room. There was a curious stillness as of frost, and she watched the reflection of the fire leaping in opalescent miniature about the high windows. There was a new spinet, set at an angle to the rest of the furniture, in a case of light-coloured wood, painted with cupids, zephyrs and roses, all waxen-pale. The tall, quiet chamber began to depress her spirits, so that she felt compelled to strike the extreme treble note of the spinet which through the stillness rang out like the unwonted pipe of a bird in a hot August woodland.