He interpreted it as in some sort of a reproach, and was about to protest when he saw the Speaker frowning at him. He did not understand the frown, but he moderated his vehemence. “I have been learning,” he said in level tones. “I have been learning a great deal.” And then he added more quietly, “Not but what you could teach me much more.”
At this she raised her head and laughed frankly; and he, looking up too, saw that the Speaker had drawn Thomas Wells away and that the backs of both were disappearing in the throng. A strange, uncomfortable sense of an intrigue, which he could not understand, oppressed him. He glared suspiciously at the girl, but read nothing more than mischief and merriment in her face.
“I was well scolded the last time I spoke to you,” she said, “but I have behaved well this time, haven’t I?”
Exhilaration chased all his doubts away. He gazed at her openly, took in the wide eyes, the straight nose, the sensitive mouth, the healthy skin. Then he tried to pull himself together, to recover a dry, sane consciousness of his situation. It was absurd, he told himself—at his age!—to be unsettled by a conversation with a beautiful girl who might have been, if he had had any, one of his remote descendants. He felt unaccountably like a man glissading on the smooth, steep slope of a hill. Of course, he would in a moment be able to catch hold of a tuft of grass, to steady himself by digging his heels into the ground.... But meanwhile the Lady Eva was looking at him.
“What do you think I could teach you?” she asked.
“I know so little,” he answered haphazard. “I know nothing about any of the people here. I suppose you know them all?”
“They are the big men and their wives. What can I tell you about them?”
“What do you think of them yourself?”
She eyed him a little askance, doubtful but almost laughing. “What would you think ... what would they think—if I were to tell you that?”
“But they will never know,” he urged, in a tone of ridiculously serious entreaty.