'Handsome and clever and entertaining. You see I'm generous.'
'Yes; you must know him well,' Mrs. Capadose repeated.
'He has seen a great deal of life,' said her companion.
'Yes, we have been in so many places. You must see my little girl. She
is nine years old--she's too beautiful.'
'You must bring her to my studio some day--I should like to paint her.'
'Ah, don't speak of that,' said Mrs. Capadose. 'It reminds me of
something so distressing.'
'I hope you don't mean when _you_ used to sit to me--though that may
well have bored you.'
'It's not what you did--it's what we have done. It's a confession I must
make--it's a weight on my mind! I mean about that beautiful picture you
gave me--it used to be so much admired. When you come to see me in
London (I count on your doing that very soon) I shall see you looking
all round. I can't tell you I keep it in my own room because I love it
so, for the simple reason----' And she paused a moment.
'Because you can't tell wicked lies,' said Lyon.
'No, I can't. So before you ask for it----'
'Oh, I know you parted with it--the blow has already fallen,' Lyon
interrupted.
'Ah then, you have heard? I was sure you would! But do you know what we
got for it? Two hundred pounds.'
'You might have got much more,' said Lyon, smiling.
'That seemed a great deal at the time. We were in want of the money--it
was a good while ago, when we first married. Our means were very small
then, but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. We had the
chance; it really seemed a big sum, and I am afraid we jumped at it. My
husband had expectations which have partly come into effect, so that now
we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture went.'
'Fortunately the original remained. But do you mean that two hundred was
the value of the vase?' Lyon asked.
'Of the vase?'
'The beautiful old Indian vase--the Grand Duke's offering.'
'The Grand Duke?'
'What's his name?--Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. Your husband mentioned
the transaction.'
'Oh, my husband,' said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon saw that she coloured a
little.
Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which
he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on:
'He tells me it's now in his collection.'
'In the Grand Duke's? Ah, you know its reputation? I believe it contains
treasures.' She was bewildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made
the mental reflection that for some reason which would seem good when he
knew it the husband and the wife had prepared different versions of the
same incident. It was true that he did not exactly see Everina Brant
preparing a version; that was not her line of old, and indeed it was not
in her eyes to-day. At any rate they both had the matter too much on
their conscience. He changed the subject, said Mrs. Capadose must really
bring the little girl. He sat with her some time longer and
thought--perhaps it was only a fancy--that she was rather absent, as if
she were annoyed at their having been even for a moment at
cross-purposes. This did not prevent him from saying to her at the last,
just as the ladies began to gather themselves together to go to bed:
'You seem much impressed, from what you say, with my renown and my
prosperity, and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you
have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?'
'I did know it.'
'Well, I didn't'
'You were too modest.'
'You didn't think so when I proposed to you.'
'Well, if I had married you I couldn't have married _him_--and he's so
nice,' Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it--he had learned that
at dinner--but it vexed him a little to hear her say it. The gentleman
designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for
good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned
away, 'He wants to paint Amy.'
'Ah, she's a charming child, a most interesting little creature,' the
Colonel said to Lyon. 'She does the most remarkable things.'
Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the
hostess out of the room. 'Don't tell him, please don't,' she said.
'Don't tell him what?'
'Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.' And she passed on.
'She thinks I swagger about the child--that I bore people,' said the
Colonel. 'I hope you smoke.' He appeared ten minutes later in the
smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard
covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon's eye, made him feel
that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for
costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period
of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century.
They were a remarkable couple, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the
Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he
emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not
regret she had not married _him_. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes
were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose
remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had
such a hard day's work. That was the worst of a hunting-house--the men
were so sleepy after dinner; it was devilish stupid for the ladies,
even for those who hunted themselves--for women were so extraordinary,
they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating
influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence,
would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence--not all of
them--might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a
table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents
twinkle sociably. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners
of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel
Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied
eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this
wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.
They talked about the house, Lyon having noticed an oddity of
construction in the smoking-room; and the Colonel explained that it
consisted of two distinct parts, one of which was of very great
antiquity. They were two complete houses in short, the old one and the
new, each of great extent and each very fine in its way. The two formed
together an enormous structure--Lyon must make a point of going all over
it. The modern portion had been erected by the old man when he bought
the property; oh yes, he had bought it, forty years before--it hadn't
been in the family: there hadn't been any particular family for it to be
in. He had had the good taste not to spoil the original house--he had
not touched it beyond what was just necessary for joining it on. It was
very curious indeed--a most irregular, rambling, mysterious pile, where
they every now and then discovered a walled-up room or a secret
staircase. To his mind it was essentially gloomy, however; even the
modern additions, splendid as they were, failed to make it cheerful.
There was some story about a skeleton having been found years before,
during some repairs, under a stone slab of the floor of one of the
passages; but the family were rather shy of its being talked about. The
place they were in was of course in the old part, which contained after
all some of the best rooms: he had an idea it had been the primitive
kitchen, half modernised at some intermediate period.
'My room is in the old part too then--I'm very glad,' Lyon said. 'It's
very comfortable and contains all the latest conveniences, but I
observed the depth of the recess of the door and the evident antiquity
of the corridor and staircase--the first short one--after I came out.
That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away,
in its brown dimness (the lamps didn't seem to me to make much
impression on it), for half a mile.'
'Oh, don't go to the end of it!' exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.
'Does it lead to the haunted room?' Lyon asked.