So it happened that when the rest of the family dispersed in different directions, early in the afternoon, I pinned on a big, flat hat—a white embroidered affair, with a great bow of black velvet ribbon—and walked with him out into the glow. Down the avenue of cedars we went and up the broad road, for the orchard can be reached through a big gate opening off the pike, and the distance is much longer around that way. We soon gained the desired shade of its luxuriant leafiness, and I pointed out to him our most noteworthy trees. He admired their beauty without looking at them.
After walking around the orchard a bit we finally sat down on a fragment of stone wall, a prehistoric structure, which still protects a portion of the grounds; and he took off his hat and began to fan with it. His forehead was a little damp, and, as he wiped away the perspiration, I observed again the exceeding fairness of his skin. His hair, too, is so nearly light that the sprinkling of gray is almost unnoticed, save by the closest scrutiny.
My survey of him, while at close range, was quite brief, for, after a remark or two about the heat at this time of day, he turned to me suddenly and asked with disconcerting straightforwardness:
"What were you doing that day at the gates of the little cemetery?"
"Oh! Why, I was walking around—trying to get warm."
I longed to ask him what he was doing there.
"I figured that day that you were a faithful little soul, going out to visit some hallowed spot. You looked so strikingly dark and vivid against the colorless background of the sky that I quite thought you were Oriental. Then the next time I saw you, in the lobby of the city hall—do you remember?—Well, you were with a tall, foreign-looking woman, a Russian, I imagined; so that convinced me—"
"She is a Pole," I corrected, "but she's the wife of Doctor Gordon, a great friend of ours."
"—and that convinced me," he went on, as if Ann Lisbeth's nationality were of no more moment to him than one of the bits of stone which I had gathered up from fragments scattered over the top of the wall, and was making white marks upon the solid rock sides with these tiny splinters, "that you were foreign." Then, in a lower tone, and with little hesitation in his delightful, drawling voice, he added: "I called you Rebecca—because I had to call you something."
"How disappointing to find me a plain American girl!"