The news, communicated to her by her husband in answer to her inquiry, had surprised her. That was why she had given a little laugh with a tone of derision in it when she had said:
"A nightingale! How lovely! I hope they may find it. It shouldn't prove so arduous as the quest of the meteor-bird. I do hope that those children will not catch cold. It is a trifle imprudent."
"Imprudent?"
"Going off that way with nothing on their heads."
"Or in them. Happy children!" cried a moralizing novelist, who was smoking an extremely good cigar--it had not come from his own tobacconist.
"We can't all be novel-writers," said one of the women.
"Thank the Lord!" said one of the men, with genuine piety.
In three-quarters of an hour the members of the quest party returned.
They had been fully rewarded for their trouble; they had been listening to the nightingale for nearly twenty minutes, they said; it had been very lovely, they agreed, without a single dissentient voice.
It probably was; at any rate they were very silent for the rest of the night.
"You have begun well," said Ella to Herbert, when they found themselves together in the drawing room, later on, shortly before midnight. Someone was playing on the piano, so that the general conversation and yawning were not interfered with. "You have begun well. You will soon get to know her if your others days here are like to-day. That nightingale! Oh, yes, you will soon get to know her."
He shook his head.
"I doubt it," said he, in a low tone. His eyes were turned in the direction of Phyllis. She was on a seat at an open window, the twilight of moonlight and lamplight glimmering about her hair. "I doubt it. It takes a man such as I am a long time to know such a girl as Phyllis Ayrton."
That was a saying which had a certain amount of irritation for Ella.
He had never said anything in the past about her, Ella, being beyond the knowledge of ordinary men.
"That's a very good beginning," said she, with a little laugh that meant much. "But don't despair. After all, girls are pretty much alike. I was a girl once--it seems a long time ago. I thought then that I knew a great deal about men. Alas! all that I have learned since is simply that they know a great deal about me. Am I different from other women, I wonder? Am I more shallow--more transparent? Was I ever an enigma to you, Bertie?"
"You were always a woman," he said. "That is why----"
"That is why----"
"That is why I am here to-night. If you were not a true woman I should be far away."
"You are far away--from me, Bertie."
"No, no! I am only beginning to appreciate you--to understand you."
"I am to be understood through the medium of Phyllis Ayrton? Isn't that like looking at happiness through another's eyes?"
He did not appear to catch her meaning at once. He looked at her and then his eyes went across the room to Phyllis. At the same instant the performance on the piano ceased. Everyone said "Thanks, awfully good," and there were some audible yawns.
There was a brandy and soda yearning in the men's eyes.
"We'll get off to bed; someone may begin to play something else," whispered the hostess to one of her lady guests.
The men looked as if they had heard the suggestion and heartily approved of it.
The next evening Ella was fortunate enough to get beside Herbert once again--she had scarcely had an opportunity of exchanging a word with him all day. He had been with Phyllis alone in the Canadian canoe. It only held two comfortably, otherwise---- But no one had volunteered to put its capacity to the test. Ella had gone in one of the punts with four or five of her guests; but the punt never overtook the canoe. It was those of the guests who had been in the punt that afterward said it was very funny to observe the chagrin of Queen Guinevere when she found that her Sir Lancelot had discovered an Elaine.
"You have had a delightful day, I'm sure," said Ella. She had found him at the bottom of the garden just before dinner. It was not for her he was loitering there.
"Delightful? Perhaps. I shall know more about it ten years hence," he replied.
