This declaration appeared to Acton to have a certain force; he had indeed a sense of asking more of her than he offered her. He returned to the window, and watched, for a moment, a little star that twinkled through the lattice of the piazza. There were at any rate offers enough he could make; perhaps he had hitherto not been sufficiently explicit in doing so. “I wish you would ask something of me,” he presently said. “Is there nothing I can do for you? If you can’t stand this dull life any more, let me amuse you!”
The Baroness had sunk once more into a chair, and she had taken up a fan which she held, with both hands, to her mouth. Over the top of the fan her eyes were fixed on him. “You are very strange tonight,” she said, with a little laugh.
“I will do anything in the world,” he rejoined, standing in front of her. “Shouldn’t you like to travel about and see something of the country? Won’t you go to Niagara? You ought to see Niagara, you know.”
“With you, do you mean?”
“I should be delighted to take you.”
“You alone?”
Acton looked at her, smiling, and yet with a serious air. “Well, yes; we might go alone,” he said.
“If you were not what you are,” she answered, “I should feel insulted.”
“How do you mean—what I am?”
“If you were one of the gentlemen I have been used to all my life. If you were not a queer Bostonian.”