"My guardian is very much interested in him," Miss Woodruff went on. "She believes that he has a great future. She is always interested in promising young men." This, no doubt, was why Miss Woodruff had so kindly encouraged him to take his chances.
"He looks a clever fellow," said Gregory.
"Do you like his face?" Miss Woodruff inquired. Mr. Drew, as if aware of their scrutiny, had turned his eyes upon them for a moment. They were large, jaded eyes, lustrous, yet with the lustre of a surface rather than of depth; dense, velvety and impenetrable.
"Well, no, I don't," said Gregory, genially decisive. "He looks unwholesome, I think."
"Oh! Unwholesome?" Miss Woodruff repeated the word thoughtfully rather than interrogatively. "Yes; perhaps it is that. It is a danger of talented modern young men, isn't it. They are not strong enough to be so intelligent; one must be very strong—in character, I mean—if one is to be so intelligent. Perhaps he is not strong in character. Perhaps that is what one feels. Because I do not like his face, either; and I go greatly by faces."
"So do I," said Gregory. After a moment, in which they both continued to look at Mr. Drew, he went on. "I wondered last night what nationality you belonged to. I had been wondering about you for a long while before you looked round at me."
"You had heard about me?" she asked.
He was pleased to be able to say: "Oh, I wondered about you before I heard."
"People are so often interested in me because of my guardian," said Miss Woodruff; "everything about her interests them. But I am an American—if you were not told; that is to say my father was an American—and my mother was a Norwegian; but though I have never been to America I count myself as an American, and with right, I think," she added. "We always spoke English when I was a child, and I remember so many of my father's friends. Some day I hope I may go to America. Have you been there? Do you know New England? My father came from New England."
"No; I've never been there. I'm very insular and untravelled."