“Oh, it’s you!” she said, addressing Roden. “I was just trying th’ piano to see ’f any ’v the keys’d stuck since the last Englishman left; but th’ haven’t. D’you like music?” she went on, in her vibrant voice, which seemed in some strange manner to harmonize with the firelight and the now steady hum of the rain without. “I’ll tell you, before you say anything, I can play very well.”
Roden found her open conceit a very novel and amusing sensation, but when she had struck a few chords firmly, her long fingers sinking in among the keys as might the fingers of a miser among the gold coin that he loved, he thought no more of anything save the melody that filled the room.
“Gad!” said he, when she had ceased, “I should say you could play, rather! Where on earth--who taught you?”
“No one,” she said, absently, striking noiseless chords with her left hand, and not looking at him. “I’ve heard people, and I do’t by ear. And the men that’ve had th’ Hall’ve been awful kind ’bout lettin’ me play--an’ that’s all,” comprehensively--adding, with sudden irrelevance, “Were your clothes quite dry?”
“Quite,” he assured her; “but they are beastly dirty to come to supper in.”
“I dried them myself,” she continued, taking no notice of his last assertion. “Such work as I had, too! I really think if Milly hadn’t helped me, you’d ’a’ been in--in--in your green silk quilt now.”
She leaned forward for some moments, laughing, with her head against the music-rack, so that the piano reverberated shrilly with the clear sound. Roden laughed with her.
“Who told you--the little nigger?” he asked. “And who is Milly?”
She got suddenly to her feet, as suddenly becoming grave, and closed the piano.
“Milly’s one o’ th’ darkies,” she said. “Come and get your supper.”
He followed her across the wide hall into the dining-room, and found that supper at Caryston Hall was a very pretty meal. It was served on finest but much-darned damask, by the light of six tall candles in silver candlesticks, each ornamented by a little petticoat of scarlet silk, which gave them the appearance of diminutive coryphées pirouetting on one slender wax leg. A bowl of violets and primroses occupied the centre of the table, flanked on either side by crystal dishes, filled, the one with the pale amber of honey, the other with the deep crimson of cranberries.