“And our people?” she asked. “Do you really think that our people are so far apart? Between you and me, for instance,” she added, meaning to ask the question naturally enough, but suddenly losing confidence and looking away from him,—“between you and me there seems no radical difference of race. You might almost be an Englishman—not one of these men of fashion, of course, but a statesman or a man of letters, some one who had taken hold of the serious side of life.”
“You pay me a very delightful compliment,” he murmured.
“Please repay me, then, by being candid,” she answered. “Consider for a moment that I am a typical English girl, and tell me whether I am so very different from the Japanese women of your own class?”
He hesitated for a moment. The question was not without its embarrassments.
“Men,” he said, “are very much the same, all the world over. They are like the coarse grass which grows everywhere. But the flowers, you know, are different in every country.”
Lady Grace sighed. Perhaps she had been a trifle too daring! She was willing enough, at any rate, to let the subject drift away.
“Soon the curtain will go up,” she said, “and we can talk no longer. I should like to tell you, though, how glad I am—how glad we all are—that you can come to us next week.”
“I can assure you that I am looking forward to it,” he answered a little gravely. “It is my farewell to all of you, you know, and it seems to me that those who will be your father’s guests are just those with whom I have been on the most intimate terms since I came to England.”
She nodded.
“Penelope is coming,” she said quickly,—“you know that?—Penelope and Sir Charles Somerfield.”