I am old, I dare say I shall consider it a godly and suitable employment to spend my sabbath afternoons in slumber; being young and broadly awake, I find the time hang very heavily on my hands. I take a peep at "Good Words," I look at the pictures in the "Sunday at Home," finally I take up Lady Flytton's album, which I have indeed already explored, but still find interesting, thanks to the extraordinary unhandsomeness of her friends and relations; her defunct husband bearing the palm away from them all for general unsavouriness, imbecility, and grimace. I am just grinning at the photograph of a very short man, who has a most ferocious expression of countenance, and looks as though he were saying, "Laugh at me if you dare!" when the door opens, and Paul Vasher is announced. The sisters do not awake, and he does not see me. In another moment he is face to face with Silvia, who enters hastily through the glass-door.
"You sent for me," he says, "and I have come."
"Come out into the garden," she says, abruptly.
And they go out together, along the terrace, and disappear among the trees. An hour slips away, the light fails strangely; the skies are of ink, save where a lurid-tipped cloud betokens mischief; every leaf and tree and flower stands stirless; there is not a living thing to be seen.
Steps come quickly along the terrace, and Paul Vasher comes in alone. I am half leaping up to speak to him, when something in his face checks me, and I fall back; in another moment he is gone. The closing door awakens Lady Flytton, who sits up, and asks, sharply—
"Who was that just went out?"
"Mr. Vasher."
"Vasher here!" screams the old woman. "Has that little cat been up to some more of her tricks? Well, he didn't stay long!" And she composes herself to sleep again.
