"Why, you do not really propose to call that thrilling fact in question?" the lady answered, very brightly. "That would be too mortifying. It would constitute the climax of the ennui from which I have suffered during the many months of this English winter. I had promised myself at least one vital sensation when you and I should meet, and you should tell me the true, inward history of that romantic, old house of yours, Stoke Rivers."
She sat in an attitude, arranged the folds of her boxcloth shirt, patted the lace into place about her neck.
"You make me feel very badly," she said.
Laurence objected to soiling his conscience by lying at least as much as most men. But surely, he argued, there are cases of justifiable perjury, as of justifiable homicide.
"I am awfully sorry," he said, "to dash your hopes of a sensation. But, you see, neither the romantic, old house or its inward history are my property as yet, so I can't give either away however much I may desire to do so."
"I know it. I do not ask you to commit any indiscretion. I do not ask you to tell me anything."
Laurence braced himself.
"How fortunate, since there's nothing to tell!" he said.
His hostess looked hard at him for a moment, and then at the floor.
"There was a time, before I lived among them, when I believed the English to be a simple and undiplomatic nation," she said. "I know better now."