One evening, contrary to his usual custom, Sir Philip went out after the late dinner. Before leaving, he kissed his wife tenderly, and told her on no account to sit up for him—he and Neville were going to attend to a little matter of business which might detain them longer than they could calculate. After they had gone, Thelma resigned herself to a lonely evening, and, stirring the fire in the drawing-room to a cheerful blaze, she sat down beside it. First, she amused herself by reading over some letters recently received from her father,—and then, yielding to a sudden fancy, she drew her spinning-wheel from the corner where it always stood, and set it in motion. She had little time for spinning now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by which she was surrounded.
"I ought to have one of my old gowns on," she half murmured, glancing down at the pale-blue silk robe she wore, "I am too fine to spin!"
And she almost laughed as the wheel flew round swiftly under her graceful manipulations. Listening to its whirr, whirr, whirr, she scarcely heard a sudden knock at the street-door, and was quite startled when the servant, Morris, announced—"Sir Francis Lennox!"
Surprised, she rose from her seat at the spinning-wheel with a slight air of hauteur. Sir Francis, who had never in his life seen a lady of title and fashion in London engaged in the primitive occupation of spinning, was entirely delighted with the picture before him,—the tall, lovely woman with her gold hair and shimmering blue draperies, standing with such stateliness beside the simple wooden wheel, the antique emblem of household industry. Instinctively he thought of Marguerite;—but Marguerite as a crowned queen, superior to all temptations of either man or fiend.
"Sir Philip is out," she said, as she suffered him to take her hand.
"So I was aware!" returned Lennox easily. "I saw him a little while ago at the door of the Brilliant Theatre."
She turned very pale,—then controlling the rapid beating of her heart by a strong effort, she forced a careless smile, and said bravely—
"Did you? I am very glad—for he will have some amusement there, perhaps, and that will do him good. He has been working so hard!"
She paused. He said nothing, and she went on more cheerfully still—
"Is it not a very dismal, wet evening! Yes!—and you must be cold. Will you have some tea?"