Page:Out of due time, Ward, 1906.djvu/41

Rh of the moors high above us on either side of the valley. We were sitting on the moss-grown top of the wall, Marcelle having forgotten the yellow satin, when we looked round and found the Count standing beside us. She shrieked.

"Don't, Marcelle; think of the stillness," he said in a low voice.

"But you surprised me, Paul. And do you know that we are already great friends, and I have adjusted my mind to a new set of ideas about Miss Fairfax, and she is to call me 'Marcelle' and I her 'Lisa'—it is not ugly like 'Lizzie'. But where is your Sutcliffe?"

"He is going to play, and you must come and sit outside the drawing-room window with me and listen."

She jumped up exclaiming, "Delightful! and do you know, Paul, that Miss Fairfax—c'est à dire, Lisa—says that your Sutcliffe is a well-known author, and that half England talks about him? Isn't it amusing? And she and her sister have formed their minds on his books, or his articles, or his something and——"

Paul's voice sounded faintly irritable as he answered, "But I told you——"

"You told me that he was intelligent and far above the average English Catholic—mais tiens—he will hear me if I go on"—a discovery which she might have made sooner, as we were by now close to Mr. Sutcliffe, who was standing in the long window of the drawing-room with the end of a cigar in his mouth. I swore mentally that I would never tell anything to Marcelle again, and with hot cheeks I sank into a garden chair near the window. The Count sat down and told her to stop fidgeting, and Mr. Sutcliffe went to the piano.

"Whatever else he is," murmured the irrepressible lady by my side, "he has some true musical talent."

"Silence!" commanded Paul, and silence followed, only once broken by Marcelle exclaiming in a loud whisper that