Constance finished with her view first, and crossing over, she seated herself in the deep embrasure of a window close beside Tony’s parapet. He rose again at her approach, but there was no eagerness in the motion; it was merely the necessary deference of a donkey-driver toward his employer.
‘Oh, sit down,’ she insisted, ‘I want to talk to you.’
He opened his eyes with a show of surprise; his hurt feelings insisted that all the advances should be on her part. Constance seemed in no hurry to begin; she removed her hat, pushed back her hair, and sat playing with the bunch of edelweiss which was stuck in among the roses—flattening the petals, rearranging the flowers with careful fingers; a touch, it seemed to Tony’s suddenly clamouring senses, that was almost a caress. Then she looked up quickly and caught his gaze. She leaned forward with a laugh.
‘Tony,’ she said, ‘do you spik any language besides Angleesh?’
He triumphantly concealed all sign of emotion.
‘Si, signorina, I spik my own language.’
‘Would you mind my asking what that language is?’
He indulged in a moment’s deliberation. Italian was clearly out of the question, and French she doubtless knew better than he—he deplored this polyglot education girls were receiving nowadays.
He had it! He would be Hungarian. His sole fellow guest in the hotel at Verona the week before had been a Hungarian nobleman, who had informed him that the Magyar language was one of the most difficult on the face of the globe. There was at least little likelihood that she was acquainted with that.
‘My own language, signorina, is Magyar.’