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Cicely watched her lovingly, and every now and again Julian Adderley, waving away the smoke of his own cigar with one hand, studied her face and tried to fathom its expression. She spoke but little, and that chiefly to Lord Charlemont who was on her left-hand side. "And how long are you going to stay in this jolly old place, Miss Vancourt?" he asked.
But Cicely saw her not her whole soul was in her singing, and she had no glance even for Julian Adderley, who, gazing at her as if she were already the prima donna in an opera, listened enrapt. "The Lord is my Shepherd; He feedeth me, In the depth of a desert land; And, lest I should in the darkness slip, He holdeth me by the hand."
Here she made a grimace, drawing her mouth down into the elongated frown of the famous Florentine, with such an irresistibly comic effect that Adderley gave way to a peal of hearty, almost boyish laughter. "That's right!" said Cicely approvingly "That's YOU, you know! It's natural to laugh at your age you're only about six or seven-and- twenty, aren't you?"
"Seeing this look, his mocking smile in which there was something of triumph of the joy of possession turned to a scowl of positive brutality. He clenched his fists in a way that set me bristling. He advanced toward the girl and although the width of the room divided them, she recoiled and the significance of expression and gesture was unmistakable. Adderley paused.
"Does it matter?" and Adderley lifted his eyelids with a languid expression "For instance let us suppose that in the past you have lost something and that in the present you gain something, does it not equalise the position?" "The gain is very little in my case!" said John, yet even as he spoke he felt a pang of shame at his own thanklessness.
And I certainly ought not to have stayed away from home so many years. But it's never too late to mend!" She smiled, and advancing a step or two called "Cicely!" Cicely turned, looking up from beneath her spreading canopy of dark cedar boughs. "Oh, Maryllia, we're having such fun!" she exclaimed "Mr. Adderley is talking words, and I'm talking music! We'll show you how it goes presently!"
Adderley found her charming with this shade of fatigue and listlessness upon her, more charming than in her most radiant phases of vivacity. Her peach-like skin, warmed as it was by the sun, was tinted with Nature's own exquisite colouring, and compared most favourably with the cosmetic art so freely displayed by her female friends on either side of her.
The shadow disappeared, and Adderley, still staring as if hypnotized at the spot where it had been, continued to hold my shoulder as in a vise. Then, sinking down upon a heap of cushions beside me, he loudly and shakily ordered more champagne.
"There's one thing about Heaven which everybody seems agreed upon," -she said "It's a place where we're all expected to sing!" "Not a doubt of it!" agreed Walden "You will be quite in your element!" "The idea of Heaven is remote so very remote!" said Adderley "But if such a place existed, and I were bound to essay a vocal effort there, I should transform it at once to Hell!
We're all ready!" Julian Adderley had turned to Walden. "Permit me to call and see you alone!" he said. "I cannot just now appreciate the poetry of your work in the church as I should do as I ought to do as I must do! The present company is discordant! one requires the music of Nature,-the thoughts, the dreams! But no more at present!
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