Cartaret’s hand went to his face. He looked at Chitta: Chitta’s returning glance was something between an appeal and a threat, but a trifle nearer the latter.
“I had a little fall,” said Cartaret, “and I was scratched in falling.”
The room was bare, but clean and pleasant, fresh from the constant application of Chitta’s mop and broom, fresher from the Spring breeze that came in through the front windows, and freshest from the presence of the Lady of the Rose. Two curtained corners seemed to contain beds. At the rear, behind a screen, there must have been a gas-stove where Chitta could soon be heard at work upon the breakfast. What furniture there was bore every evidence of being Parisian, purchased in the Quarter; there was none to indicate the nationality of the tenants; and the bright little table, at which Cartaret was presently seated so comfortably as to forget the necessity of the Pre-Raphaelite pose, was Parisian too.
“You must speak French,” smiled the Lady—how very white her teeth were, and how very red her lips!—as she looked at him across the coffee-urn: “that is the sole condition that, sir, I impose upon you.”
“Willingly,” said Cartaret, in the language thus imposed; “but why, when you speak English so well?”
“Because”—the Lady was half serious about it—“I had to promise Chitta that, under threat of her leaving Paris; and if she left Paris, I should of course have to leave it, too. French she understands a little, as you know, but not English, and”—the Lady’s pink deepened—“she says that English is the one language of which she cannot even guess the meaning when she hears it, because English is the one language that can be spoken with the lips only, and spoken as if the speaker’s face were a mask.”
He said he should have thought that Chitta would pick it up from her. “Why,” he said, “it comes so readily to you: you answered in it instinctively that time when I first saw you. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember. I was very frightened. Perhaps I used it when you did because we had an English governess at my home and speak it much in the family. We speak it when we do not want the servants to understand, and so we have kept it from Chitta.” She was pouring the coffee. “Tell me truly: do I indeed speak it well?”
“Excellently. Of course you are a little precise.”
“How precise?”