For a few minutes after they had gone out he was alone, for Lucia went in to fetch the matches, and he looked round, in strong appreciation of his surroundings, and in perceptible appreciation of himself in appreciating them. Small and simple as was the house and garden, there was a refinement and exquisiteness about it that shone through the wool-work of Aunt Elizabeth, as X rays shine through otherwise opaque substances, and he knew well from whom that emanated. He had lunched in a small villa, only just detached, with a strip of a garden, in an intensely suburban town, but instead of the tedium of forced conversation and pompous display there was culture, humour, naturalness. There was, too, the presence of this girl—a Titian translated into the paler hues of Saxon blood, with golden hair instead of red, but with all the fire and strength of the South. But in this moment's pause, while he was alone, he could not help being gratified at his own perception; where others might only have seen a detached villa and a railway embankment, he saw the courage and the culture that turned them into a house in which he felt at home. With equally fine perceptions also he saw through the rugged brusqueness of Aunt Cathie, divining her devotion for the girl, and not wondering at it. Charlie Lindsay, on the occasion of a garden-party of his own, to which Aunt Catherine had come, had summed her up as a "queer old bird," and seen no farther. That was like Charlie: to him surface was everything. In the same way he had only seen a damned pretty girl in Lucia, and had clearly wished to make an impression on her. From her aloofness, Brayton concluded, rather to his satisfaction, that the impression he had made was an unfortunate one. Lucia was not like that; she was not the sort of girl who wished to flirt with every presentable young man who presented himself.
He had not much time for these satisfactory reflections, for she was soon back again with the matches, and delicately encouraged him to talk about himself. He proceeded to do so, though under the impression that he was talking about other things.
"Yes, I mean to be here a great deal," he said, "for I have no intention of spending my life in London. People say you must be in great towns like London or Paris to keep your intellectual life active, but I do not at all agree. There are pictures, music, theatres in town, of course, but I very much doubt whether most of the effect of those things is not sensuous rather than intellectual."
