“Nay,” said Edmund, who began to listen with alarm. “Let us do nothing by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, boxes, and gallery, and let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting afterpiece, and a figure-dance, and a hornpipe, and a song between the acts. If we do not outdo Ecclesford, we do nothing.”

“Why not a fullblown opera, then,” sounded the soft, sarcastic voice of Lord Eastwind. “Aida has both the grandeur and the scenery. All that is lacking would be dulcet singers. Or perchance not—we have Miss Crawford. But nay, of course, we don’t have Aida itself, not in another fifty earthly years—”

Once again, it seemed that the only one who heard him speak these decidedly incomprehensible words was Fanny. Lord Eastwind watched her, long moments after he ceased talking.

But Fanny said nothing, and attempted to occupy her gaze elsewhere.

“Now, Edmund, do not be disagreeable,” meanwhile said Julia. “Nobody loves a play better than you do.”

“True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; not the raw efforts of gentlemen and ladies, who have all the disadvantages of education and decorum to struggle through.”

After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated eagerness. Nothing was settled but that Tom Bertram would prefer a comedy, and his sisters and Henry Crawford a tragedy, and that it was a mere trifle to find a piece which would please them all. The resolution to act seemed so decided as to make Edmund quite uncomfortable. He was determined to prevent it, if possible, though his mother did not evince the least disapprobation.

Lady Bertram merely glanced at Lord Eastwind, and muttered nonsense that sounded like: “Whatever the Lordship His Pharaonic Mummyness commands.”

The raven-haired gentleman barely inclined his head. In that moment, a servant walking behind his seat with a tray of tea service, paused momentarily, as though placed in a trance, and went still for a span of three seconds, leaning in sudden weariness against the Lord’s chair.

Fanny alone saw the gloved fingers of Lord Eastwind make contact with the servant’s coat-sleeves.

It was only for a briefest moment. . . .

And the next, Lord Eastwind’s exotic black eyes acquired a new brilliance, and his sallow windblown cheeks appeared to smooth out in a bloom of health.

The same evening afforded Edmund an opportunity of trying his strength. Maria, Julia, Henry Crawford, and Mr. Yates were in the billiard-room. Tom (returning into the drawing-room, where Edmund was standing thoughtfully by the fire, Lady Bertram on the sofa at a little distance, Lord Eastwind reclined in a wingchair moved back in the shadows nearby, and Fanny close beside her ladyship, arranging her work) thus began as he entered—