“Oh, nothing; a headache,” was the answer he received to his anxious inquiries. “I hope I wasn’t more than usually ill-mannered; pray ask Mrs. Vissian to try and tolerate me.”
“You’re getting a little low, it strikes me; too much solitude. By-the-bye, you’ll look in at Knightswell this afternoon?”
“I suppose Mrs. Clarendon feels obliged to ask me; I dare say she’d rather I kept away.”
“My dear sir, these are outcomes of the black humour; you are not yourself. Mrs. Clarendon will be very glad indeed to see you; so she assured me. I pray you, fight against this tendency to melancholia.”
It was difficult to reach the gates without having previously collected considerably more mud than one cares to convey into a lady’s drawing-room. Kingcote endeavoured to remove some of this superfluous earth as he walked up the drive by rubbing his boots in the wet grass; the result was not inspiriting.
“Pooh!” he exclaimed impatiently. “If she really cares to see me, she won’t regard the state of my boots; any one who accepts such as I am, must take mud and all.”
The thought appeared to amuse him, he walked on with a laugh.
As he entered the garden, he met the trap just driving away from the house. A gentleman was seated in it. He had rather the look of a man of business, and was reading a letter. He scanned Kingcote, then resumed his reading.
Disturbed with the thought that there might be other visitors in the house, Kingcote hesitated, doubted whether to go on. He made up his mind to do so, however, not without sundry fresh communings with himself of a bitter kind. On inquiry he found that Mrs. Clarendon was at home, and, after a moment in the hall, he was led to the dining-room. Mrs. Clarendon was writing letters at a table by the window; as she rose, he thought he detected annoyance on her face.
“You don’t at all; or rather, you will not, if you’ll let me treat you as a friend. I have just one letter I am obliged to write; I asked the servant to bring you here, thinking you might like to look at the pictures till I have done. One or two are thought good, I believe--that Veronese, and that Ruysdael, and the Greuze yonder. May I?”
It was hard not to smile in reply to her voice and look as she spoke the last two little words, the more so that it was clear she had something just now to trouble her quite other than the inopportune arrival of a visitor. Kingcote walked to the picture she had indicated as a Veronese, and, affecting to view it, let his eyes wander to Isabel at the writing-table. She was thinking, previous to commencing her letter. Her left arm rested on the desk, and the thumb and middle finger of the hand pressed her forehead; with the end of the penholder she tapped her chin. He noticed how beautiful was the outline of her head, relieved against the bright window; noticed, too, the grace of her neck when she bent forward to write. The scratching of her pen--she wrote very rapidly--was the only sound in the room.