He said “Ya, ya!” constantly when he was thinking.
“I have met your good papa,” he went on, “and I like him much. He is a man of great gift, but—”
He threw out his hands expressively.
“Poor papa,” I thought. “I suppose he let the Count see how unbusiness-like and absent-minded he is.”
After a moment the Count said:
“His—your papa’s face—it is a typical northern one—such as we see plenty in Scandinavia— Ya, ya!”
“Papa is half-Irish and half-English,” I explained.
He nodded.
“Ya, ya, it is so. Nevertheless his face is northern. It is typical, while you—” He regarded me smilingly. “Gott! You look like one little Indian girl that I meet when I live in the North. Her father, the people told me, was one big rich railway man of Canada, but he did not know that pretty little Indian girl, she was his daughter. Ya, ya!”
He rubbed his hands, and nodded his head musingly, as he studied me. Then: