“He wasn’t very polite to call you a thing,” said Cecil, laughing; he seemed in excellent spirits.
“Perhaps he took her for a perfume or a flower,” said Randolph quickly.
The two men measured each other with a swift glance.
“That was really very neat,” remarked Lord Maundrell. “You might have blushed, Lee.”
“She has had too many compliments; she is quite spoiled for anything less than downright uxoriousness.”
“Ah!” observed Lord Maundrell.
They went in to dinner. Cecil was not to be laughed out of his interest in California; the grape industry had interested him during his brief sojourn in the South, and he wanted to know all about it, from its incipience to its finalities. Randolph, who knew little about the grape industry, and cared less, answered in glittering generalities, and headed him off to the subject of mission architecture. Cecil immediately instituted a comparison between the results of Indian labour and the characteristic edifices of Spain—more particularly of Granada, and then branched off to the various divergences under native and climatic influences to be found in South America. Of all this Randolph knew practically nothing. Like most Americans, he was a specialist, and had studied only that branch of his art necessary to his own interests. But his mind was very nimble, and he so successfully concealed from the Englishman his superficial knowledge of the subject, that Lee, who followed the conversation with rapt interest, did not know whom to admire most. She was wondering if Cecil could make as brilliant a showing as Randolph on next to nothing, when, in reply to a question of his host’s regarding the gold mines of Peru, he replied indifferently:
“I don’t know anything about them. They didn’t interest me,” and dismissed the subject; one upon which Randolph happened to have some knowledge. He had invested heavily in a newly-discovered mine of which one of his friends was secretary.
The conversation turned to politics. Randolph was at his best analysing and illustrating the party differences, but when Cecil questioned him about the genesis of the two parties, the constitution of the United States, and the historic significance of the various presidents, even generalities failed him, and he was obliged to confess himself nonplussed.
“Upon my word,” he exclaimed laughing, “I do believe that the only thing I remember about United States history is its covert admonition to grow up as fast as I could and lick the English.”