Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to Miss Denham, and carried on a conversation becomingly.

Tea had been made in the garden, and she had politely sipped half a cup, which involved no step inside the guilty house, and therefore no distress to her antagonism.  The sun descended.  She heard the doctor reciting.  Could it be poetry?  In her imagination the sombre hues surrounding an incendiary opposed that bright spirit.  She listened, smiling incredulously.  Miss Denham could interpret looks, and said, ’Dr. Shrapnel is very fond of those verses.’

Rosamund’s astonishment caused her to say, ’Are they his own?’—­a piece of satiric innocency at which Miss Denham laughed softly as she answered, ‘No.’

Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness.

‘Are they written by the gentleman at his side?’

‘Mr. Lydiard?  No.  He writes, but the verses are not his.’

‘Does he know—­has he met Captain Beauchamp?’

‘Yes, once.  Captain Beauchamp has taken a great liking to his works.’

Rosamund closed her eyes, feeling that she was in a nest that had determined to appropriate Nevil.  But at any rate there was the hope and the probability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken a long start of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham:  and struggling to be candid, to ensure some meditative satisfaction, Rosamund admitted to herself that the girl did not appear to be one of the wanton giddy-pated pusses who play two gentlemen or more on their line.  Appearances, however, could be deceptive:  never pretend to know a girl by her face, was one of Rosamund’s maxims.

She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel’s partiality for music toward the hour of sunset.  Miss Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently sauntering up, invited Rosamund to a seat on a bench near the open window of the drawing-room.  He nodded to his ward to go in.

‘I am a fire-worshipper, ma’am,’ he said.  ’The God of day is the father of poetry, medicine, music:  our best friend.  See him there!  My Jenny will spin a thread from us to him over the millions of miles, with one touch of the chords, as quick as he shoots a beam on us.  Ay! on her wretched tinkler called a piano, which tries at the whole orchestra and murders every instrument in the attempt.  But it’s convenient, like our modern civilization—­a taming and a diminishing of individuals for an insipid harmony!’

‘You surely do not object to the organ?—­I fear I cannot wait, though,’ said Rosamund.

Miss Denham entreated her.  ’Oh! do, madam.  Not to hear me—­I am not so perfect a player that I should wish it—­but to see him.  Captain Beauchamp may now be coming at any instant.’

Mr. Lydiard added, ’I have an appointment with him here for this evening.’