The gates were open, and he rode through; but as he passed the lodge,
the sound of a violin played by a master hand smote upon his ear. He
pulled the horse into a walk, and approached the house in a dream.
Workmen were all over the place, and he stared about him like a
stranger; and they eyed him with half-indifferent, half-curious
scrutiny. He got off his horse and walked up the stone steps of the
terrace into the hall. Here the foreman of the firm of decorators
approached him.
"Do you want to see any one, sir?" he asked.
"No," said Drake diplomatically. He was reluctant to announce himself.
"You are making some alterations?" he said.
"Rather, sir," assented the foreman, with a self-satisfied smile. "We're
just turning the old place inside out. For the new lord, you know."
"I see," said Drake.
He knew that he ought to have said: "I am the new lord--I am Lord
Angleford." But he shrank from it. The whole thing, the transformation
of the old place, though he knew it was necessary, was distasteful to
him.
"What is that?" and he nodded toward a cluster of small globes in the
center of the hall.
"Oh, that! That's the electric light," said the man. "There's going to
be electric lights all over the house. Wait a minute, and I'll turn some
of it on; though perhaps I'd better not, for the gentleman who manages
it is away to-day. He's gone to Southampton to see after some things
which ought to have come this morning."
"Don't trouble," said Drake absently.
"Well, perhaps I'd better not," said the man. "He mightn't like it. He's
the gent that lives in the lodge."
"In the lodge!" said Drake. "The south lodge?"
The man nodded.
"He plays the violin?" said Drake.
The man grinned.
"No, no! That's his friend. He's a musician--the gentleman his sister is
engaged to."
Drake got on his horse and rode away, leaving the park by the east
lodge.
The three weeks slipped away, and the day for the great gathering at
Anglemere was near at hand. By dint of working day and night, the
contractors had succeeded in getting the house finished in time; and
Lady Angleford, who had come down, with an army of servants, at the
week's end, expressed her approval and her astonishment that so much
should have been effected in so short a time.