Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity of his character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who became admitted into his intimate acquaintance.
Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, had no nasal twang, and employed no Americanisms in her talk, which was frank, lively, and at times eloquent. She had a great ambition to be esteemed of a masculine understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she darted towards it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and said, “To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in the present bee,* and full of mind, sir.”
[*Bee, a common expression in “the West” for a meeting or gathering
]of people.
“Singing mind,” said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill-natured impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to admire.
“I have not heard her sing,” replied the American, dryly; “and the words ‘singing mind’ are doubtless accurately English, since you employ them; but at Boston the collocation would be deemed barbarous. You fly off the handle. The epithet, sir, is not in concord with the substantive.”
“Boston would be in the right, my dear Colonel. I stand rebuked; mind has little to do with singing.”
“I take leave to deny that, sir. You fire into the wrong flock, and would not hazard the remark if you had conversed as I have with Signorina Cicogna.”
Before Graham could answer, Signorina Cicogna stood before him, leaning lightly on Mrs. Morley’s arm.
“Frank, you must take us into the refreshment-room,” said Mrs. Morley to her husband; and then, turning to Graham, added, “Will you help to make way for us?”
Graham bowed, and offered his arm to the fair speaker. “No,” said she, taking her husband’s. “Of course you know the Signorina, or, as we usually call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna. No? Allow me to present you. Mr. Graham Vane, Mademoiselle Cicogna. Mademoiselle speaks English like a native.”