“Young life here is evidently an excrescence, not part of the home; a troop of daughters turned into this room would speedily set going a different condition of things,” thought Loveday, taking stock of the faded white and gold wall paper, the chairs covered with lilies and roses in cross-stitch, and the knickknacks of a past generation that were scattered about on tables and mantelpiece.
A yellow damask curtain, half-festooned, divided the back drawing-room from the front in which she was seated. From the other side of this curtain there came to her the sound of voices—those of a man and a girl.
“Cut the cards again, please,” said the man’s voice. “Thank you. There you are again—the queen of hearts, surrounded with diamonds, and turning her back on a knave. Miss Monroe, you can’t do better than make that fortune come true. Turn your back on the man who let you go without a word and—”
“Hush!” interrupted the girl with a little laugh: “I heard the next room door open—I’m sure someone came in.”
The girl’s laugh seemed to Loveday utterly destitute of that echo of heartache that in the circumstances might have been expected.
At this moment Mr. Hawke entered the room, and almost simultaneously the two young people came from the other side of the yellow curtain and crossed towards the door.
Loveday took a survey of them as they passed.
The young man—evidently “my nephew, Jack”—was a good-looking young fellow, with dark eyes and hair. The girl was small, slight and fair. She was perceptibly less at home with Jack’s uncle than she was with Jack, for her manner changed and grew formal and reserved as she came face to face with him.
“We’re going downstairs to have a game of billiards,” said Jack, addressing Mr. Hawke, and throwing a look of curiosity at Loveday.
“Jack,” said the old gentleman, “what would you say if I told you I was going to have the house redecorated from top to bottom, and that this lady had come to advise on the matter.”
This was the nearest (and most Anglicé) approach to a fabrication that Mr. Hawke would allow to pass his lips.
“Well,” answered Jack promptly, “I should say, ‘not before its time.’ That would cover a good deal.”
Then the two young people departed in company.
Loveday went straight to her work.
“I’ll begin my surveying at the top of the house, and at once, if you please,” she said. “Will you kindly tell one of your maids to show me through the bedrooms? If it is possible, let that maid be the one who waits on Miss Monroe and Mrs. Hawke.”
The maid who responded to Mr. Hawke’s summons was in perfect harmony with the general appearance of the house. In addition, however, to being elderly and faded, she was also remarkably sour-visaged, and carried herself as if she thought that Mr. Hawke had taken a great liberty in thus commanding her attendance.
In dignified silence she showed Loveday over the topmost story, where the servants’ bedrooms were situated, and with a somewhat supercilious expression of countenance, watched her making various entries in her notebook.
In dignified silence, also, she led the way down to the second floor, where were the principal bedrooms of the house.
“This is Miss Monroe’s room,” she said, as she threw back a door of one of these rooms, and then shut her lips with a snap, as if they were never going to open again.
The room that Loveday entered was, like the rest of the house, furnished in the style that prevailed in the early Victorian period. The bedstead was elaborately curtained with pink lined upholstery; the toilet-table was befrilled with muslin and tarlatan out of all likeness to a table. The one point, however, that chiefly attracted Loveday’s attention was the extreme neatness that prevailed throughout the apartment—a neatness, however, that was carried out with so strict an eye to comfort and convenience that it seemed to proclaim the hand of a first-class maid. Everything in the room was, so to speak, squared to the quarter of an inch, and yet everything that a lady could require in dressing lay ready to hand. The dressing-gown lying on the back of a chair had footstool and slippers beside it. A chair stood in front of the toilet table, and on a small Japanese table to the right of the chair were placed hairpin box, comb and brush, and hand mirror.
“This room will want money spent upon it,” said Loveday, letting her eyes roam critically in all directions. “Nothing but Moorish woodwork will take off the squareness of those corners. But what a maid Miss Monroe must have. I never before saw a room so orderly and, at the same time, so comfortable.”
This was so direct an appeal to conversation that the sour-visaged maid felt compelled to open her lips.
“I wait on Miss Monroe, for the present,” she said snappishly; “but, to speak the truth, she scarcely requires a maid. I never before in my life had dealings with such a young lady.”
“She does so much for herself, you mean—declines much assistance.”
“She’s like no one else I ever had to do with.” (This was said even more snappishly than before.) “She not only won’t be helped in dressing, but she arranges her room every day before leaving it, even to placing the chair in front of the looking glass.”
“And to opening
