During dinner she could not speak to him, nor immediately after dinner. The evil moment she put off from half-hour to half-hour, still looking as though all were quiet within her bosom as she sat beside him with her book in her hand. He was again at work before she began her story; he thought at least that he was at work, for he had before him on the table both Prichard and Latham, and was occupied in making copies from some drawings of skulls which purposed to represent the cerebral development of certain of our more distant Asiatic brethren.
"Is it not singular," said be, "that the jaws of men born and bred in a hunter state should be differently formed from those of the agricultural tribes?"
"Are they?" said Lady Mason.
"Oh yes; the maxillary profile is quite different. You will see this especially with the Mongolians, among the Tartar tribes. It seems to me to be very much the same difference as that between a man and a sheep, but Prichard makes no such remark. Look here at this fellow; he must have been intended to eat nothing but flesh; and that raw, and without any knife or fork."
"I don't suppose they had many knives or forks."
"By close observation I do not doubt that one could tell from a single tooth not only what food the owner of it had been accustomed to eat, but what language he had spoken. I say close observation, you know. It could not be done in a day."
"I suppose not." And then the student again bent over his drawing. "You see it would have been impossible for the owner of such a jaw as that to have ground a grain of corn between his teeth, or to have masticated even a cabbage."
"Lucius," said Lady Mason, becoming courageous on the spur of the moment, "I want you to leave that for a moment and speak to me."
"Well," said he, putting down his pencil and turning round. "Here I am."
"You have heard of the lawsuit which I had with your brother when you were an infant?"