300 PARK STREET, Friday morning, November 25th.
I know just the meaning of dust and ashes, for that is what I felt I had had for breakfast this morning, the day after "Carmen."
Lady Ver had given orders she was not to be disturbed, so I did not go near her, and crept down to the dining-room, quite forgetting the master of the house had arrived. There he was, a strange, tall, lean man with fair hair, and sad, cross, brown eyes, and a nose inclined to pink at the tip--a look of indigestion about him, I feel sure. He was sitting in front of a Daily Telegraph propped up on the teapot, and some cold, untasted sole on his plate.
I came forward. He looked very surprised.
"I--I'm Evangeline Travers," I announced.
He said "How d'you do?" awkwardly. One could see without a notion what that meant.
"I'm staying here," I continued. "Did you not know?"
"Then won't you have some breakfast? Beastly cold, I fear," politeness forced him to utter. "No, Ianthe never writes to me. I had not heard any news for a fortnight, and I have not seen her yet."
Manners have been drummed into me from early youth, so I said, politely, "You only arrived from Paris late last night, did you not?"
"I got in about seven o'clock, I think," he replied.
"We had to leave so early--we were going to the opera," I said.
"A Wagner that begins at unearthly hours, I suppose?" he murmured, absently.
"No, it was 'Carmen,' but we dined first with my--my--guardian, Mr. Carruthers."
"Oh!"
We both ate for a little. The tea was greenish black--and lukewarm. No wonder he has dyspepsia.
"Are the children in, I wonder?" he hazarded, presently.
"Yes," I said. "I went to the nursery and saw them as I came down."
At that moment the three angels burst into the room, but came forward decorously and embraced their parent. They do not seem to adore him as they do Lady Ver.
"Good-morning, papa," said the eldest, and the other two repeated it in chorus. "We hope you have slept well and had a nice passage across the sea."
They evidently had been drilled outside.
Then, nature getting uppermost, they patted him patronizingly.
"Daddie, darling, have you brought us any new dolls from Paris?"
"And I want one with red hair, like Evangeline," said Yseult, the youngest.