"So you've been looking at my Victor Hugo," he remarked, putting his right hand negligently into his pocket instead of holding it forth in adieu.
IV
So overset was she by the dramatic surprise of his challenging remark, and so enlightened by the sudden perception of it being perfectly characteristic of him, that her manner changed in an instant to a delicate, startled timidity. All the complex sensitiveness of her nature was expressed simultaneously in the changing tints of her face, the confusion of her eyes and her gestures, and the exquisite hesitations of her voice as she told him about the coincidence which had brought back to her in his office the poem of her schooldays.
He came to the bookcase and, taking out the volume, handled it carelessly.
"I only brought these things here because they're nicely bound and fill up the shelf," he said. "Not much use in a lawyer's office, you know!" He glanced from the volume to her, and from her to the volume. "Ah! Miss Miranda! Yes! Well! It isn't so wonderful as all that. My father used to give her lessons in French. This Hugo was his. He thought a great deal of it." Mr. Cannon's pose exhibited pride, but it was obvious that he did not share his father's taste. His tone rather patronized his father, and Hugo too. As he let the pages of the book slip by under his thumb, he stopped, and with a very good French accent, quite different from Hilda's memory of Miss Miranda's, murmured in a sort of chanting--"Dieu qui sourit et qui donne."
"That's the very one!" cried Hilda.
"Ah! There you are then! You see--the bookmark was at that page." Hilda had not noticed the thin ribbon almost concealed in the jointure of the pages. "I wouldn't be a bit astonished if my father had lent her this very book! Curious, isn't it?"
It was. Nevertheless, Hilda felt that his sense of the miraculousness of life was not so keen as her own; and she was disappointed.
"I suppose you're very fond of reading?" he said.
"No, I'm not," she replied. Her spirit lifted a little courageously, to meet his with defiance, like a ship lifting its prow above the threatening billow. Her eyes wavered, but did not fall before his.