“Don’t do anything of the kind,” said Michael.

“But I must.  And if when you are down at Ashbridge at Christmas you find strangers hanging about the deep-water reach, you might just let me know.  It’s no use telling your father, because he will certainly think they have come to get a glimpse of him as he plays golf.  But I expect you’ll be too busy thinking about that new friend of yours, and perhaps his sister.  What did she tell me we had got to do?  ’To her garlands let us bring,’ was it not?  You and I will both send wreaths, Michael, though not for her funeral.  Now don’t be a hermit any more, but come and see me.  You shall take your garland girl into dinner, if she will come, too; and her brother shall certainly sit next me.  I am so glad you have become yourself at last.  Go on being yourself more and more, my dear:  it suits you.”

CHAPTER VIII

Some fortnight later, and not long before Michael was leaving town for his Christmas visit to Ashbridge, Sylvia and her brother were lingering in the big studio from which the last of their Sunday evening guests had just departed.  The usual joyous chaos consequent on those entertainments reigned:  the top of the piano was covered with the plates and glasses of those who had made an alfresco supper (or breakfast) of fried bacon and beer before leaving; a circle of cushions were ranged on the floor round the fire, for it was a bitterly cold night, and since, for some reason, a series of charades had been spontaneously generated, there was lying about an astonishing collection of pillow-cases, rugs, and table-cloths, and such articles of domestic and household use as could be converted into clothes for this purpose.  But the event of the evening had undoubtedly been Hermann’s performance of the “Wenceslas Variations”; these he had now learned, and, as he had promised Michael, was going to play them at his concert in the Steinway Hall in January.  To-night a good many musician friends had attended the Sunday evening gathering, and there had been no two opinions about the success of them.

“I was talking to Arthur Lagden about them,” said Falbe, naming a prominent critic of the day, “and he would hardly believe that they were an Opus I., or that Michael had not been studying music technically for years instead of six months.  But that’s the odd thing about Mike; he’s so mature.”

It was not unusual for the brother and sister to sit up like this, till any hour, after their guests had gone; and Sylvia collected a bundle of cushions and lay full length on the floor, with her feet towards the fire.  For both of them the week was too busy on six days for them to indulge that companionship, sometimes full of talk, sometimes consisting of those dropped words and long silences, on which intimacy lives; and they both enjoyed, above all hours in the week, this time that lay between the friendly riot of Sunday evening and the starting of work again on