“No; nothing so impressive. He was a little Frenchman who came out of his pew farther down the aisle, and in the nicest possible English asked me to go there with him. You’ve no idea how merciful he was to me, nor how I appreciated it. I was beginning to feel like an outcast, and he saved my self-respect and returned it to me, unbroken.”
Brock started to answer; but Dr. Howard had appealed to Nancy for confirmation of one of his statements. By dint of much effort and at cost of frequent misunderstandings, the good doctor had established relations with his neighbor across the table, and the two men had been toiling through a prolonged conversation. Concerning mere matters of theory, each fondly imagined that he understood the other perfectly. Confronted with the problem of the ultimate destination of the sugar-bowl, they lost their bearings completely, and were forced to supplement their tongues with the use of their right forefingers.
Nancy’s acquaintance with the row of Frenchmen was limited to the careful distribution, at every meal, of exactly two little nods apiece, one of hail, the other of farewell. Since her first meeting with Brock, she had been surprised at the chance which had continually brought them into the dining-room at the same hour; and, in her absorption in his talk, one or other of the Frenchmen was often half through his deliberate meal before she remembered to deal out to him his nod of greeting. She liked them well enough; but, at the present stage of intercourse, they seemed to her a good deal like well-bred automatons.
While Nancy talked to her father, Brock eyed her furtively. She wore a dark green gown, that noon, and her vivid hair was piled high in an intricate heap of burnished coils. Her hands were bare of rings, her whole costume void of the dangling ornaments which Brock so keenly detested; but, close in the hollow of her throat, there blazed one great opal like a drop of liquid fire.
So suddenly that he had no time to drop his eyes to his plate, Nancy turned to him.
“Mr. Brock, there is my French Samaritan!” she exclaimed softly.
Brock glanced up at the figure who was moving past the table where they sat.
“That? That is St. Jacques,” he said.
“Who is he?”
“A law student, over at Laval, and one of the best fellows walking the earth at the present time,” Brock answered, with the swift enthusiasm which, as Nancy discovered in the weeks to come, was one of his most striking characteristics.