"Then you did the Holy Land, I suppose?" queried Villiers, regarding him with sudden and growing inquisitiveness.
"My dear fellow, certainly NOT! The Holy Land, invested by touts, and overrun by tourists, would neither appeal to my imagination nor my sentiments--and in its present state of vulgar abuse and unchristian sacrilege, it is better left unseen by those who wish to revere its associations, . . don't you think so?"
He smiled as he put the question, and drawing up an old-fashioned oak chair to the fire, seated himself. Villiers meanwhile stared at him in unmitigated amazement, . . what had come to the fellow, he wondered? How had he managed to invest himself with such an overpowering distinction of look and grace of bearing? He had always been a handsome man,--yes, but there was certainly something more than handsome about him now. There was a singular magnetism in the flash of the fine soft eyes, a marvellous sweetness in the firm lines of the perfect mouth, a royal grandeur and freedom in the very poise of his well-knit figure and noble head, that certainly had not before been apparent in him. Moreover, that was an odd remark for him to make about "wishing to revere" the associations of the Holy Land,--very odd, considering his formerly skeptical theories!
Rousing himself from his momentary bewilderment, Villiers remembered the duties of hospitality.
"Have you dined, Alwyn?" he asked, with his hand on the bell.
"Excellently!" was the response, accompanied by a bright upward glance; "I went to that big hotel opposite the Park, had dinner, left the surplus of my luggage in charge, selected one small portmanteau, took a hansom and came on here, resolved to pass one night at least under your roof ..."
"One night!" interrupted Villiers; "You're very much mistaken, if you think you are going to get off so easily! You'll not escape from me for a month, I tell you! Consider yourself a prisoner!"
"Good! Send for the luggage to-morrow!" laughed Alwyn, flinging himself back in his chair in an attitude of lazy comfort, "I give in!--I resign myself to my fate! But what of the 'cello?"
And he pointed to the bulgy-looking casket of sweet sleeping sounds--sleeping generally so far as Villiers was concerned, but ready to wake at the first touch of the master-hand. Villiers glanced at it with a comical air of admiring vanquishment.
"Oh, never mind the 'cello!" he said indifferently, "that can bear being put by for a while. It's a most curious instrument,-- sometimes it seems to sound better when I have let it rest a little. Just like a human thing, you know--it gets occasionally tired of me, I suppose! But I say, why didn't you come straight here, bag, baggage, and all? ... What business had you to stop on the way at any hotel? ... Do you call that friendship?"