“No, thank you,” said Harold. “I’m off to the drawing-room.”
He followed the men who were straggling into the great square hall where a billiard table occupied an insignificant space. The skeleton of an ancient Irish elk formed a rather more conspicuous object in the hall, and was occasionally found handy for the disposal of hats, rugs, and overcoats.
“She is greatly interested in the Romeo and Juliet story,” remarked Edmund, strolling up to him.
“The girl--the necessary girl. The--let us say, alternative. The--the handrail.”
“Yes. Oh, I forgot: you were not within hearing. There was something said about the perilous causeway of matrimony.”
“And that suggested the handrail idea to you? No better idea ever occurred even to you, O man of many ideas, and of still more numerous phrases.”
“She is responsive--she is also clever--she is uncommonly clever--she got the better of me.”
“I will say no more about it. A man cannot go a better way about checking an incipient passion for a young woman than by insisting on her cleverness. We do not take to the clever ones. Our ideal does not include a power of repartee.”
There was a suspicion of bitterness in Harold’s voice, as he repeated the words of his friend.
“Incipient passion! I think we had better go into the drawing-room.”
CHAPTER VI.--ON THE INFLUENCE OF AN OCEAN.
MISS CRAVEN was sitting on a distant sofa listening, or pretending to listen, which is precisely the same thing, with great earnestness to the discourse of Mr. Durdan, who, besides being an active politician, had a theory upon the question of what Ibsen meant by his “Master Builder.”
Harold said a few words to Miss Innisfail, who was trying to damp her mother’s hope of getting up a dance in the hall, but Lady Innisfail declined to be suppressed even by her daughter, and had received promises of support for her enterprise in influential quarters. Finding that her mother was likely to succeed, the girl hastened away to entreat one of her friends to play a “piece” on the pianoforte.
She knew that she might safely depend upon the person to whom she applied for this favour, to put a stop to her mother’s negotiations. The lady performed in the old style. Under her hands the one instrument discharged the office of several. The volume of sound suggested that produced by the steam orchestra of a switchback railway.