The Keepers of the People

1473Meanwhile Lord Lisdor had also been turning his leisure, after his fashion, to evil account, and giving his time to Vashti. He had endured his separation from Ruth, who still lived with Althea in the Golden Rooms, with an even mind; he had accepted without a murmur Althea’s refusal to renew their old flirtation: she had declared herself too old, and too busy for it. But when he was not on one of the hunting expeditions with which Prince Ralph was thoughtful to enliven his stay, he was in the middle building or the middle gardens with Vashti and Prince Raleigh, to whom the plain shrewdness of his talk was always pleasing. He had not been at the pains to learn much of the language of the mutes; he but needed light to see the play of expression on Vashti’s face, and he could talk to her and understand. Under his admiration of her beauty there had been from the first a pity for her perpetual, forced silence, and as he talked to her, it informed his voice with new tones of a gentleness almost tender. To her it was growing the pleasantest of voices, bringing into her life new dreams and a new meaning. It had been a peaceful life, spent in tending the old Prince, directing the work of the mutes, who should spin or weave, or embroider, who should wait on the Princesses, changing them in ordered succession from task to task. She had never looked for any change in it: of the blood of the Princes, she might not marry any of the male mutes who rose to command: she had as little hope of love as a Vestal. Then Lord Lisdor came into her life. His growing desire, plain enough to her, to be with her pleased her; his strangeness awoke her interest; his easy, careless life, his ready laugh, short and harsh though it was, pleased her again: the middle building of the palace was always in a gloom, and it lightened it for her: now and again an admiring word, a fondness in his eyes stirred a vague trouble in her. All unawares she was in a fair way to lose her heart to him; while his pity was warming his admiration to a passion.