“Dear me, no! but Russia and the Czar, and tyranny and despotism, and many other things I had never heard of. I tried to calm him down and reason with him, but I might as well have reasoned with the cockatoo in the window. At last he caught himself up quickly in the middle of a sentence, strode over to the piano, and began to play as he generally does, you know, when he comes here. Well, would you believe it, my dear! instead of improvising or playing operatic airs as usual, he began to play a stupid little tune which every child was taught years ago, of course with variations of his own. Then he turned round on the music-stool with the oddest smile I ever saw, and said, “Do you know that air, Mrs. O’Reilly?”
“Yes,” I said; “but I forget now what it is.’”
“It was composed by Pestal, one of the victims of Russian tyranny,” said he. “The executioner did his work badly, and Pestal had to be strung up twice. In the interval he was heard to mutter, ‘Stupid country, where they don’t even know how to hang!’”
“Then he gave a little forced laugh, got up quickly, wished me good-bye, and was gone before I could put in a word.”
“What a horrible story to tell in a drawing-room!” said Lena Houghton. “I envy Gertrude less than ever.”
“Poor girl! What a sad prospect it is for her!” said Mrs. O’Reilly with a sigh. “Of course, my dear, you’ll not repeat what I have just told you.”
“Not for the world!” said Lena Houghton emphatically. “It is perfectly safe with me.”
The conversation was here abruptly ended, for the page threw open the drawing-room door and announced ‘Mr. Zaluski.’
“Talk of the angel,” murmured Mrs. O’Reilly with a significant smile at her companion. Then skilfully altering the expression of her face, she beamed graciously on the guest who was ushered into the room, and Lena Houghton also prepared to greet him most pleasantly.
I looked with much interest at Sigismund Zaluski, and as I looked I partly understood why Miss Houghton had been prejudiced against him at first sight. He had lived five years in England, and nothing pleased him more than to be taken for an Englishman. He had had his silky black hair closely cropped in the very hideous fashion of the present day; he wore the ostentatiously high collar now in vogue; and he tried to be sedulously English in every respect. But in spite of his wonderfully fluent speech and almost perfect accent, there lingered about him something which would not harmonise with that ideal of an English gentleman which is latent in most minds. Something he lacked, something he possessed, which interfered with the part he desired to play. The something lacking showed itself in his ineradicable love of jewellery and in a transparent habit of fibbing; the something possessed showed itself in his easy grace of movement, his delightful readiness to amuse and to be amused, and in a certain cleverness and rapidity of idea rarely, if ever, found in an Englishman.