CHAPTER XXX THE FLUTTER OF A SHEET OF MUSIC
Gail, in a pretty little rose-coloured morning robe, with soft frills of lace around her white throat and at her white elbows, sat on the floor of the music room amid a chaos of sheet music. She was humming a gay little song suggested by one of the titles through which she had leafed, and was gradually sorting her music for the yacht party; instrumental pieces here, popular things there, another little pile of old-fashioned glees which the assembled crowd might sing, just here a little stack of her own solos, nearby the rector’s favourites, between the two their duets. It was her part in one of the latter she was humming now, missing, as she sang, the strong accompaniment of the Reverend Smith Boyd’s mellow voice. She was more peaceful this morning than she had been for many days.
The butler came through the hall, and Gail looked up with a suppressed giggle as she saw him pass the door. She always had an absurd idea that his hinges should be oiled.
“Miss Gail is not at home, sir,” she heard the butler say, and Gail paused with a sheet of music suspended in her hand, the whole expression of her face changing. She had only given instructions that one person should receive that invariable message.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” was the next observation Gail heard, in a tone of as near startled remonstrance as was possible to the butler’s wooden voice.
There was a sound almost as of a scuffle, and then Allison, with his top coat on his arm and his hat in his hand, strode to the doorway of the music room, followed immediately by the butler, who looked as if his hair had been peeled a little at the edges. Allison had apparently brushed roughly past him, and had disturbed his equanimity for the balance of his life.
Gail was on her feet almost instantaneously with the apparition in the doorway, and she still held the sheet of music which she had been about to deposit on one of the piles. Allison’s eyes had a queer effect of being sunken, and there was a strange nervous tension in him. Gail dismissed the butler with a nod.
“You were informed that I am not at home,” she said.
“I meant to see you,” he replied, with a certain determined insolence in his tone which she could not escape. There was a triumph in it, too, as if his having swept the butler aside were only a part of his imperious intention. “I have some things to say to you to which you must listen.”