Perhaps you will kindly request young Evesham on my behalf to make a little less noise."

He deliberately put her from him, and prepared to rise. But Mrs. Lorimer suddenly and very unexpectedly rose first. She stood before him, slightly bending, her hands on his broad shoulders.

"Will you kiss me, Stephen?" she said.

He lifted a grim, reluctant face. She stooped, slipping her arms about his neck. "My own dear husband!" she whispered.

He endured her embrace for a couple of seconds; then, "That will do, Adelaide," he said with decision. "You must not let yourself get emotional. Dear me! It is getting late. I am afraid I really must ask you to leave me."

Her arms fell. She drew back, dispirited. "Forgive me,--oh, forgive me!"

she murmured miserably.

He turned back to his writing-table, still frowning. "I was not aware that I had anything to forgive," he said. "But if you think so,--" he shrugged his shoulders, beginning already to turn the pages of his masterpiece--"my forgiveness is yours. I wonder if you would care to divert your thoughts from what I am sure you will admit to be a purely selfish channel by listening to a portion of this Advent sermon."

"What is it about?" asked Mrs. Lorimer, hesitating.

"My theme," said the Reverend Stephen, "is the awful doom that awaits the unrepentant sinner."

There was a moment's silence, and then Mrs. Lorimer did an extraordinary thing. She turned from him and walked to the door.

"Thank you very much, Stephen," she said, and she spoke with decision albeit her voice was not wholly steady. "But I don't feel that that kind of diversion would do me much good. I think I shall run up to the nursery and see Baby Phil have his bath."

She was gone; but so noiselessly that Mr. Lorimer, turning in his chair to rebuke her frivolity, found himself addressing the closed door.

He turned back again with a heavy sigh. There seemed to be some disturbing element at work. Time had been when she had deemed it her dearest privilege to sit and listen to his sermons. He could not understand her refusal of an offer that ought to have delighted her. He hoped that her heart was not becoming hardened.

Could he have seen her ascending the stairs at that moment with the tears running down her face, he might have realized that that fear at least was groundless.

CHAPTER IX

THE TICKET OF LEAVE

Seated at the schoolroom piano, Piers was thoroughly in his element. He had a marvellous gift for making music, and his audience listened spell-bound. His own love for it amounted to a pa.s.sion, inherited, so it was said, from his Italian grandmother. He threw his whole soul into the instrument under his hands, and played as one inspired.

Jeanie, from her sofa, drank in the music with shining eyes. She had never heard anything to compare with it before, and it stirred her to the depths.

It stirred Avery also, but in a different way. The personality of the player forced itself upon her with a curious insistence, and she had an odd feeling that he did it by deliberate intention. Every chord he struck seemed to speak to her directly, compelling her attention, dominating her will. He was playing to her alone, and, though she chose to ignore the fact, she was none the less aware of it. By his music he enthralled her, making her see the things he saw, making her feel the fiery unrest that throbbed in every beat of his heart.

Gracie, standing beside him, watching with fascinated eyes the strong hands that charmed from the old piano such music as probably it had never before uttered, was enthralled also, but only in a superficial sense. She was keenly interested in the play of his fingers, which seemed to her quite wonderful, as indeed it was.

He took no more notice of her admiring gaze than if she had been a fly, pouring out his magic flood of music with eyes fixed straight before him and lips that were sometimes hard and sometimes tender. He might have been a man in a trance.

And then very suddenly the spell was broken. For no apparent reason, he fell headlong from his heights and burst into a merry little jig that set Gracie dancing like an elf.

He became aware of her then, threw her a laugh, quickened to a mad tarantella that nearly whirled her off her feet, finally ended with a crashing chord, and whizzed round on the music-stool in time to catch her as she fell gasping against him.

"What a featherweight you are!" he laughed. "You'll dance the Thames on fire some day. Giddy, what?"

Gracie lay in his arms in a collapsed condition. "You--you made me do it!" she panted.

"To be sure!" said Piers. "I'm a wizard. Didn't you know? I can make anybody do anything." There was a ring of triumph in his voice.

Jeanie drew a deep breath and nodded from her sofa. "It's called hyp--hyp--Aunt Avery, what is the word?"

"Aunt Avery doesn't know," said Piers. "And why Aunt Avery, I wonder?

You'll be calling me Uncle Piers next."

Both children laughed. "I have a special name for you," Jeanie said.

But Piers was not attending. He cast a daring glance across the room at Avery who was darning stockings under the lamp.

"Do they call you Aunt Avery because you are so old?" he enquired, as Avery did not respond to it.

She smiled a little. "I expect so," she said.

"Oh no!" said Jeanie politely. "Only because we are children and she is grown up."

Piers, with Gracie still lounging comfortably on his knee, bowed to her.

"I thank your majesty. I appeal to you as queen of this establishment; am I--as a grown-up--ent.i.tled to drop the t.i.tle of Aunt when addressing the gracious lady in question?"

Again he glanced towards Avery, but she did not raise her eyes. She worked on, still with that faint, enigmatical smile about her lips.

Jeanie looked slightly dubious. "I don't think you could ever call her Aunt, could you?" she said.

Piers turned upon the music-stool, and with one of Gracie's fingers began to pick out an impromptu tune that somehow had a saucy ring.

"I like that," said Gracie, enchanted.

He laughed. "Yes, it's pretty, isn't it? It's--Avery without the Aunt."

He began to elaborate the tune, accompanying it with his left hand, to Gracie's huge delight, "Here we come into a minor key," he said, speaking obviously and exclusively to Gracie; "this is Avery when she is cross and inclined to be down on a fellow. And here we begin to get a little excited and breathless; this is Avery in a tantrum, getting angrier and angrier every moment." He hammered out his impertinent little melody with fevered energy, protest from Gracie notwithstanding. "No, you've never seen her in a tantrum of course. Thank your lucky stars you haven't! It's an awful sight, take my word for it! She calls you a brute and nearly knocks you down with a horsewhip." The music became very descriptive at this point; then gradually returned to the original refrain, somewhat amplified and embellished. "This is Avery in her everyday mood--sweet and kind and reasonable,--the Avery we all know and love--with just a hint of what the French call _'diablerie'_ to make her--_tout-a-fait adorable_."

He cast his eyes up at the ceiling, and then, releasing Gracie's hand, brought his impromptu to a close with a few soft chords.

"Here endeth the Avery Symphony!" he declared, swinging round again on the music-stool. "I could show you another Avery, but she is not on view to everybody. It's quite possible that she has never seen herself yet."

He got up with the words, tweaked Gracie's hair, caressed Jeanie's, and strolled across to the fire beside which Avery sat with her work.

"It's awfully kind of you to tolerate me like this," he said.

"Isn't it?" said Avery, without raising her eyes.

He looked down at her, an odd gleam in his own that came and went like a leaping flame.

"You suffer fools gladly, don't you?" he said, a queer inflection that was half a challenge in his voice.