Once more the Lady bent over the blot.
“What did you invite her to talk about?” she asked quietly.
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré and all that.”
There was a pause. Then,—
“Go on,” said the Lady.
“We’d been talking about it in the library, just the afternoon before, and she seemed interested, asked about my accident and my nurse and all. Really, we were just beginning to get on capitally, when she had to go. I thought the best thing to do would be to begin where we left off; but she turned very cross, wouldn’t say a word to me and finally picked up her books and walked out of the room. I don’t see what I could have done to displease her.” And, putting on his glasses, Barth stared at the Lady with disconsolate, questioning blue eyes.
The Lady laughed a little. Nevertheless, she felt a deep longing to scold Nancy, to give Fate a sound box on the ear and to take Mr. Cecil Barth into her motherly embrace. She liked his frankness, liked the under note of respect which mingled in his outspoken admiration for Nancy. She could picture the whole scene: Barth’s nervous assumption of ease confronted with the nonchalant assurance of Brock, Nancy’s hidden amusement at the tentative request for polite conversation, and her open consternation at the subject which Barth had proposed for discussion. It was funny. She looked upon the scene with the eyes of Nancy and Brock, yet her whole womanly sympathy lay with the Englishman, an open-hearted, tongue-tied alien in a land of easy speech. Barth’s hand rested on the corner of her desk. Bending forward, she laid her own hand across his fingers.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Barth,” she said kindly. “You and Miss Howard will be good friends in time. It is an odd position, your meeting here on neutral soil. Your whole ways of life are so different that you find it hard to understand each other. I am half-way between you, and I know you both. What is more, I like you both, and I’d like to see you good friends. Leave something to time, and a great deal to Miss Howard. And—forgive me, my dear boy, but I am quite old enough to be your mother—I would let the American ways take care of themselves, and just be my own English self. If Miss Howard is going to like you at all, it will be for yourself, not for any misfit manners you may choose to put on.”
“But, the question is, is she going to like me at all?” Barth said despondingly.
The Lady’s eyes roved over him from the parting of his yellow hair to the toes of his unmistakably British shoes.