“It has been so travestied,” she interrupted, “it seems to me that the name Juliet instantly brings to mind a love-sick girl.”
He laughed.
“At least,” he said, “that could never apply to you.”
There was the faintest ripple of a smile on her face.
“No! a cold, hard name would have suited me best,” she said. “Yet I have had a cruel love and a cruel awakening.”
He saw that she was speaking to herself, rather than to him.
“You have a strange, old-world name,” she said. “I see it here—Kenelm. It is one that has been in use in your family for generations back, I suppose?”
He was struck by the musical way in which she pronounced it. There was a pretty, piquant, foreign accent about her English that was very charming.
“Pardon me,” he said, abruptly, “are you an English lady?”
Again the hot flush rippled over her face, disturbing its pale quiet, as a warm sunbeam disturbs a deep-sleeping lake, flushing it into greater beauty and warmer life.