, hangings,
and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates and
plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound,
muted splendour. He told her it was a reception night, with music: and
added: 'I miss my . . . seen anybody lately?'

'Mr. Sowerby?' said she. 'He was to have escorted me back. He may have
overslept himself.'

She spoke it plainly; when speaking of the dear good ladies, she set a
gentle humour at play, and comforted him, as she intended, with a
souvenir of her lively spirit, wanting only in the manner of gaiety.

He allowed, that she could not be quite gay.

More deeply touched the next minute, he felt in her voice, in her look,
in her phrasing of speech, an older, much older daughter than the Fredi
whom he had conducted to Moorsedge. 'Kiss me,' he said.

She turned to him full-front, and kissed his right cheek and left, and
his forehead, saying: 'My love! my papa! my own dear dada!' all the words
of her girlhood in her new sedateness; and smiling: like the moral
crepuscular of a sunlighted day down a not totally inanimate Sunday
Londen street.

He strained her to his breast. 'Mama soon be here?'

'Soon.'

That was well. And possibly at the present moment applying, with her
cunning hand, the cosmetics and powders he could excuse for a concealment
of the traces of grief.

Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see more
than the world would when Nataly entered the dining-room at the quiet
family dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though not
prattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattle
running rill-like over our daily humdrum. Simeon Fenellan would have
helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in the
morning's paper. 'No harm before Fredi, my dear. She's a young woman now.
And no harm, so to speak-at least, not against the Sanfredini. She has
donned her name again, and a villa on Como, leaving her
'duque';--paragraph from a Milanese musical Journal; no particulars. Now,
mark me, we shall have her at Lakelands in the Summer. If only we could
have her now!'

'It would be a pleasure,' said Nataly. Her heart had a blow in the
thought, that a lady of this kind would create the pleasure by not
bringing criticism.

'The godmother?' he glistened upon Nesta.

She gave him low half-notes of the little blue butterfly's imitation of
the superb contralto; and her hand and head at turn to hin