Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/196

 embroidered in silver with a design of wistaria. Yet in her lounging there was nothing of sloppiness. She was too much a woman of taste. She was comfortable; but she was trim and smart, from her bronze hair so well done, to the end of her neat silver-slippered toe.

When she had finished her cigarette she rose and went to the piano where she played for a long time, rather sentimentally and without her usual ecstatic dash. She played as if a yearning sadness had descended upon her. It may have been the thought of quitting the old house which had come to the end of the road. In another week its only occupants would be Sarah and Hennery. The others would have vanished. . . . Irene, Lily, even the black servants. There was no such thing as age or tradition. The Town had no time for such things. There was no longer room for Cypress Hill. It stood in the way of progress. The Town council was eager to buy and destroy it in order to raise on its site a new railway station, more vast and pretentious than any in the state.

It may have been this which made her sad.

Certainly her mood drove her to the depths, for she played such music as the Liebestraume and a pair of sentimental German waltzes. And gradually she played more and more softly until at length her hands slipped from the keyboard to her lap and she sat with bowed head regarding the pink tips of her polished finger-nails.

The curtains were drawn across the windows so that no sound penetrated from the outside. In the grate the fire of cannel coal crackled softly and new flames leapt up.

Presently she returned to her chair and novel, but she did not read. She remained staring into the fire in the same distracted fashion.