Certainly the most self-possessed woman in the world, under pressure of the incongruity between their last meeting and the present one, might have shown more embarrassment than Ethelberta showed on greeting him to-day.  Christopher was only a man in believing that the shyness which she did evince was chiefly the result of personal interest.  She might or might not have been said to blush—­perhaps the stealthy change upon her face was too slow an operation to deserve that name:  but, though pale when he called, the end of ten minutes saw her colour high and wide.  She soon set him at his ease, and seemed to relax a long-sustained tension as she talked to him of her arrangements, hopes, and fears.

‘And how do you like London society?’ said Ethelberta.

’Pretty well, as far as I have seen it:  to the surface of its front door.’

‘You will find nothing to be alarmed at if you get inside.’

‘O no—­of course not—­except my own shortcomings,’ said the modest musician.  ’London society is made up of much more refined people than society anywhere else.’

’That’s a very prevalent opinion; and it is nowhere half so prevalent as in London society itself.  However, come and see my house—­unless you think it a trouble to look over a house?’

‘No; I should like it very much.’

The decorations tended towards the artistic gymnastics prevalent in some quarters at the present day.  Upon a general flat tint of duck’s-egg green appeared quaint patterns of conventional foliage, and birds, done in bright auburn, several shades nearer to redbreast-red than was Ethelberta’s hair, which was thus thrust further towards brown by such juxtaposition—­a possible reason for the choice of tint.  Upon the glazed tiles within the chimney-piece were the forms of owls, bats, snakes, frogs, mice, spiders in their webs, moles, and other objects of aversion and darkness, shaped in black and burnt in after the approved fashion.

‘My brothers Sol and Dan did most of the actual work,’ said Ethelberta, ’though I drew the outlines, and designed the tiles round the fire.  The flowers, mice, and spiders are done very simply, you know:  you only press a real flower, mouse, or spider out flat under a piece of glass, and then copy it, adding a little more emaciation and angularity at pleasure.’

‘In that “at pleasure” is where all the art lies,’ said he.

‘Well, yes—­that is the case,’ said Ethelberta thoughtfully; and preceding him upstairs, she threw open a door on one of the floors, disclosing Dan in person, engaged upon a similar treatment of this floor also.  Sol appeared bulging from the door of a closet, a little further on, where he was fixing some shelves; and both wore workmen’s blouses.  At once coming down from the short ladder he was standing upon, Dan shook Christopher’s hand with some velocity.

‘We do a little at a time, you see,’ he said, ’because Colonel down below, and Mrs. Petherwin’s visitors, shan’t smell the turpentine.’