The Lady Paramount. Harland Henry

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      But I don't know that the change did much good. In a few minutes—

      "Bah!" he cried again, "It's those confounded eyes of hers. It's those laughing, searching, haunting, promising eyes."

      "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear."

      It was the voice of Adrian, raised in song. And repeating the same complaisant proffer, to a tune which I suspect was improvised, it drew near along the outer passage, till, in due process, the door of the billiard-room was opened, and Adrian stood upon the threshold.

      "Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine e-e-ear," he trolled robustly—and then, espying Anthony, fell silent.

      Anthony appeared to be deep engrossed in letter-writing.

      "Ahem," said Adrian, having waited a little.

      But Anthony did not look up.

      "Well, of all unlikely places," said Adrian, wondering.

      Anthony's pen flew busily backwards and forwards across his paper.

      "Remarkable power of mental concentration," said Adrian, on a key of philosophic comment.

      "Eh? What?" Anthony at last questioned, but absently, from the depths, without raising his eyes.

      "I 've been hunting far and wide for you—ransacking the house, turning the park topsy-turvy," said Adrian.

      "Eh? What?" questioned Anthony, writing on.

      But Adrian lost patience.

      "Eh? What? I 'll eh-what you," he threatened, shaking his fist. "Come. Put aside that tiresome letter. 'Do you happen to know where your master is?' says I to Wickersmith. 'Well, if you 'll pardon my saying so, sir, I think I see him agoing in the direction of the billiard-room, saving your presence, sir,' says Wickersmith to me." Adrian pantomimed the supposed deference of the butler. Then, loftily, "But, 'Shoo' says I. 'An optical delusion, my excellent Wick. A Christian man would be incapable of such a villainy. The billiard-room, that darksome cavern, on a heaven-sent day like this? Shucks,' says I. Yet"—his attitude became exhortative—"see how mighty is truth, see how she prevails, see how the scoffer is confounded. To the billiard-room I transport myself, sceptically, on the off-chance, and—here, good-lack, you are."

      "It's the weather," Anthony explained, having finally relinquished his correspondence. "I was in the garden—but I could n't stand the weather."

      "The weather?" wondered Adrian. "You could n't stand the weather? My poor lamb. Ah, what a delicate constitution. He could n't stand the weather." Eyes uplifted, he wagged a compassionate head.

      But suddenly, from the sarcastic note, he passed to the censorious, and then to a kind of gay rhapsodic.

      "The weather? Shame upon your insinuations. I will not hear one syllable against it. The weather? There never was such weather. The weather? Oh, for the tongues of men and angels, to chant the glory of the weather. The weather is made of sugar and spice, of frankincense and myrrh, of milk and honey, of every conceivable ingredient that's nice. The sky is an inverted bowl of Sèvres—that priceless bleu-royal; and there are appetising little clouds of whipped cream sticking to it. The air is full of gold, like eau-de-vie de Dantzic;—if we only had a liquefying apparatus, we could recapture the first fine careless nectar of the gods, the poor dead gods of Greece. The earth is as aromatic as an orange stuck with cloves; I can't begin to tell you all the wondrous woody, mossy, racy things it smells of. The sea is a great sheet of watered-silk, as blue as my blue eyes. And the birds, the robins and the throstles, the blackbirds and the black-caps, the linnets and the little Jenny Wrens, knowing the value of silence, are hoarding it like misers; but like prodigals, they 're squandering sound. The ear of mortal never heard such a delirious, delicious, such a crystalline, argentine, ivory-smooth, velvety-soft, such a ravishing, such an enravished tumult of sweet voices. Showers, cascades, of pearls and rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires. The weather, says Anthony Rowleigh. He could n't stand the weather. The weather is as perfect as a perfect work of art—as perfect as one of my own incomparable madrigals. It is absolutely perfect."

      He tossed his head, in sign of finality.

      "It appears so," Anthony discriminated gloomily; "but appearances are risky things to judge by. It may have charms for a voluptuary like you; but I"—and he took a tone of high austerity—"I, as an Englishman, have my suspicions of anything so flagrantly un-English."

      "Apropos of things un-English," said Adrian, "I 'm pining for a serious word with you."

      Anthony pulled a wry face.

      "Oh, if you 've been attacked by one of your periodic spasms of seriousness," he sighed.

      "It's about calling on Madame Torrebianca," said Adrian.

      "Oh," sighed Anthony. With a presence of mind that I can't help thinking rather remarkable, he feigned a continuity of mood; but something went ping within him.

      "Look here," said Adrian, imperatively. "I 'll thank you to drop that air of ineffable fatigue of yours, and to sit up and listen. I don't suppose you wish to be deliberately discourteous, do you? And as those ladies happen to be new-comers, and your immediate neighbours, not to say your tenants, I expect you are sufficiently acquainted with the usages of polite society to know that a failure on your part to call would be tantamount to a direct affront. Furthermore, as one of them (Miss Sandus is, unhappily, still in the Götterdämmerung of the Establishment), as Madame Torrebianca is coming to your house, as your guest, to hear Mass on Sunday morning, I sincerely hope I need n't tell you that it's simply de rigueur that you should call before that occasion."

      He stood off, and raised his brown-red eyebrows, as who, from an altitude, speaking de par le Roi, should challenge contumacy.

      But two could play at the game of eyebrow-raising. Anthony raised his.

      "Coming as my guest? Coming as my guest? I like that," he exclaimed. "What have I to do with her coming? If every stranger to whom you choose to extend the privilege of hearing Mass in the Chapel, is thereby to be constituted a guest—my guest—I shall have my hands full indeed. If she's a guest at all, if she's anybody's guest, she's yours; You 've created the situation. Don't try to thrust the brunt of it on me."

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