The two young people had entered the inner gallery and were no sooner out of sight of the company, before van Nerekool began:
"I have received your note, Miss Anna, and, as you see, I have hastened to obey your summons."
"For goodness sake speak lower," whispered she. And then in her usual tone of voice she continued: "Just help me, please, to find the music."
Whilst they were engaged in taking the pieces one by one out of a curiously carved étagère which stood by the piano and examining them, the young girl said in a whisper: "Yesterday our baboe Dalima was forcibly carried away out of the garden--Hush! do not interrupt me or I shall not have time to tell you all. The author of the outrage is Lim Ho. She has, however, been most providentially rescued by Ardjan, the man to whom she is engaged to be married. Thereupon Lim Ho has had him most fearfully tortured with Kamadoog leaves--so dreadfully that he is now in the hospital--"
"Look here, Miss Anna, I have found your 'Fleurs d'oranger,'" said van Nerekool aloud as he heard some one moving outside.
"Yes, thank you," replied Anna. "But what can have become of that sonata? Here it is," she continued in the same tone of voice, "I have it; but pray, Mr. van Nerekool, put that heavy pile of music on the piano."
"Oh," said he, "you intend to give us the sonata before the waltz?"
"Yes," said Anna, "that is best I think;" and then she continued softly, "I know that sonata so perfectly that I can go on talking while I am playing it by heart."
She sat down to the instrument, van Nerekool standing close by her side ready to turn over the leaves for her.
Anna struck the first notes of Beethoven's magnificent work while she continued: "As I was telling you, Ardjan had to be taken to the hospital in consequence of the brutal treatment he had received. But that is not what made me write to you."
"What was it then?" whispered van Nerekool eagerly. "I am all ears, Miss Anna."
"Well then," said she, "pay attention to me."
And while the nimble fingers of the talented girl ran over the keys, while she rendered in most masterly style the lovely reveries of the inspired musician--strains which full of sweetness yet here and there seem clouded by the great gloom which was impending over the author's future life--she told the young man the whole story of Dalima's abduction, of her rescue by Ardjan, in what wretched plight the poor Javanese had been found, and she told him also that close by the place where they found him a considerable quantity of smuggled opium had been discovered, and had been delivered into the custody of the chief inspector of police.