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"I wanted to talk to you about some things. I've done something rather serious to-day. I've made an important decision." Her face became anxious. "What do you mean?" she asked. "You see," he said, leaning upon the mantelshelf and looking down at the gas flames, "I've never thought that we should all have to live in this crowded house for long."
The ancient centaur, indeed, looked very wise and very noble, and the horse into which he merged was arranged with quiet skill in its lying posture, so that not a line, limb, hoof or muscle struck a note of awkwardness. "Then you think I really am worth talking to a little?" asked Margaret. He set down the light on the mantelshelf and somehow found himself holding her hand.
Above me from the mantelshelf, that Grandmamma Carruthers looked down with her great and noble smile, while the flame in her eyes seemed to answer that in my soul as I communed with myself. "What is it that you will now do, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye?" I asked of myself with a slight shaking of my knees in their cheviot trousers.
When they had all gone, Lorraine lingered a few moments by her fireside. "A hobby!" she breathed; "yes, why not? Man-making is almost equal to man-bearing. I have no son to spur up the Olympian heights; but what might I not do for Alymer, if... if " She placed her hands on the mantelshelf, and leaned her forehead down on them.
She rose and walked into the kitchen and slipped her hand along the mantelshelf to find a box of matches she had left there. She was going to end the struggle. She could not burn Zebedee, but she could burn the house. The rooms where he had made love to her should stand no longer, and so her spirit might find a habitation where her body lived.
I listened; the doors were being closed, I heard a carriage roll along the road; the flame of the two candles placed upon the mantelshelf quivered silently and were reflected in the looking-glass. I thought about the ceremony of that morning, the dinner, the ball. I said to myself, clenching my fists to concentrate my thoughts: "How was Marie dressed?
There was now no light within but what was shed by the fire and two tallow candles that gutter'd on the mantelshelf. The remaining candlesticks lay in a pool of wine on the floor, amid broken glasses, bottles, scattered coins, dice boxes and pewter pots. In the corner to my right cower'd a potboy, with tankard dangling in his hand, and the contents spilling into his shoes.
He raised his brows, but being in a taciturn humor, and having, moreover, to shield the flame from the wind that drove down the stair, he said nothing, going on in silence to the landing, and to the great eastward-facing room that had been his father's, and which now he meant to make his own. There were candles on the table, the dresser, and the mantelshelf.
He kept a bridle in his mouth, however; that little pile of grain upon the mantelshelf had somehow warned him into reticence, so that Mitchelbourne, had he not been addicted to his tobacco, would have learnt no more of the business and would have escaped the extraordinary peril which he was subsequently called upon to face.
It was quite evident that he was far from returning the compliment. He had recognised Bell, and was wondering fearfully if the latter was as sure of his identity. Bell's face betrayed nothing. All the same he was following Merritt's uneasy eye till it rested on a roll of dirty paper on the mantelshelf. That roll of paper was the missing Rembrandt, and he knew it. "Won't you offer me a chair?"
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