She seemed to reflect a little before she lifted her head. Now again he was priviledged to look squarely into her face, and he added swiftly to his store a new impression of her. The ruling characteristic of the countenance was a certain calm and serious reasonableness. The forehead was broad and comely; the glance of the eyes was at once alert and steady. The other features were content to support this controlling upper part of the face; they made a graceful and fitting frame for the mind which revealed itself in the eyes and brow—and sought to do no more. Studying her afresh in this moment of her silence, he recalled the face of a young Piedmontese bishop who had come once to his school. It had the same episcopal serenity, the same wistful pride in youth’s conquest of the things immortal, the same suggestion of intellectuality in its clear pallor.
“I should dislike to seem rude,” she said, slowly. “What is it that you want to ask?” What was it indeed? He searched confusedly about in his mind for some one question entitled to precedence among the thousand to which answers would come in good time. He found nothing better than a query as to the connection between New Haven and Brighton.
“In this little book,” he explained, “there is a time for New Haven and for London, but I cannot find a mention of Brighton, yet I am expected there this evening, or perhaps, early to-morrow morning.”
“I am sure I cannot tell you,’” she answered. “However, the places are not far apart. I should say there would certainly be trains.”
She lifted the book again as she spoke, and adjusted her shoulders to the cushions. He made haste to prevent the interview from lapsing.
“I have never seen England,” he urged dolefully, “and yet I am all English in my blood—and in my feelings, too.”
A flicker of ironical perception played for an instant in her eye and at the corner of her lip. “I have heard that a certain class of Americans adopt that pose,” she remarked. “I dare say it is all right.”
He did not grasp her meaning all at once, though the willingness to give umbrage conveyed in her tone was clear enough. He looked doubtfully at her, before he spoke again. “Oh,” he began, with hesitation—“yes, I see—you thought I was American. I am not in the least—I am all English. And it affects me very much—this thought that in a few hours now I am to see the real England. I am so excited about it, in fact,” he added with a deprecatory little laugh, “that I couldn’t bear it not to talk.”
She nodded comprehendingly. “I thought that your accent must be American—since it certainly isn’t English.”
“Oh, I have too facile an ear,” he answered readily, as if the subject were by no means new to him. “I pick up every accent that I hear. I have been much with English people, but even more with Americans and Australians. I always talk like the last family I have been in—until I enter another. I am by profession a private tutor—principally in languages—and so I know my failings in this matter very well.” She smiled at some passing retrospect. “You must have had an especially complete sense of my shortcomings as a linguist, too. I have often wondered what effect my French would produce upon an actual professor, but I should never have had the courage to experiment, if I had known.”