"Yes, my lady," and "Yes, my lady," said Bridget, with low curtsies, in reply to all these eager questions; and then Lady Tredgold and her niece followed the fat old butler--he had contrived to keep fat by sheer inactivity, in spite of Mrs. Layburne's meagre housekeeping--to the long white drawing-room, where there was a blazing log fire, and where Irene flew to her harpsichord and began to play the Sparrow Symphony from _Rinaldo_. There are moments of happiness, joyous impulses in the lives of women, which can only find expression in music. CHAPTER XII. "LOVE IN THESE LABYRINTHS HIS SLAVES DETAINS." At Lavendale Manor there was no note of expectancy, no stir among the old servants. His lordship had given no intimation of his return. The grooms had to rouse their underlings in the stable from the state of beery somnolence which followed upon a heavy supper. The butler bustled his subordinates and sent off the housemaids to light fires in all the rooms his lordship affected, and in the bedroom and dressing-room known as Mr. Durnford's, and urged cook and scullions to be brisk in the preparation of a pretty little supper. Happily there was a goose hanging in the larder, ready to be clapped on the spit, and this, with the chine which had been cooked for the servants' dinner, and a large venison pasty, with half a dozen speedy sweet dishes, would make a tolerable supper for two gentlemen. The old Italian never joined his patron at meals. He fed apart upon a diet of his own choosing, and on principles laid down by Roger Bacon and Paracelsus--taking only the lightest food, and selecting all those roots and herbs which conduce to long life. Lavendale went straight to the old chapel, without even waiting to take off his boots. The student's attitude amidst his books and crucibles might have suggested that he had been sitting there like Frederick Barbarossa in his cave, ever since that summer evening upon which his lordship had with equal suddenness burst in upon his studies. "Well, old friend, how do thy researches thrive? Is Hermes propitious?" asked Lavendale gaily. "Hast thou hit upon an easy way of manufacturing diamonds, or turning vulgar lead into the golden rain in which Danaë's ravisher veiled his divinity? Art thou any nearer the great secret?" "Do you remember the infinitely little to which distance is reduced in that fable of Achilles and the tortoise?" asked Vincenti; "and how by descending to infinitesimals the logician gives the idea of progress, and thus establishes a paradox? My progress has been infinitely little; but yes, I think there has been something gained since we parted."