"I shouldn't think that you'd ever be a friend of mine. You don't look as if you was my sort."
The smile became more pronounced, and also more insulting.
"Not your sort? I pray that I have not so much ill fortune."
He paused, as if for her to speak. She spoke.
"I don't care for foreigners. Can't abide 'em. Never could."
The man drew himself up as if she had struck him. The smile lingered about his lips, though something very different was in his eyes. He was silent, as if considering what to say. His words, when they came, ignored her unflattering remark.
"The abode of mademoiselle is a little difficult to discover, unless one happens to know just exactly where it is."
"No one asked you to discover it, as I know of, so I don't see what odds that makes to you."
The girl's insistent rudeness seemed to occasion the stranger not only surprise, but something else as well, something approaching to curiosity. He observed her with more attention, as if she suggested a problem to his mind which was of the nature of a puzzle. She was young, strongly built, healthy. Beyond that, so far as he could see, she was nothing. She had neither face nor figure. Her movements were ungainly, her features were, emphatically, plain. Her dress was not only poor--worse, it was in execrable taste. She seemed to have decked herself in as many colours as she conveniently could, none of them being in sympathy with her complexion. Her manners were those of a woman of the people, her voice was a female Cockney's. Metaphorically, M. Rossignol shrugged his shoulders; to himself he said,--
"What there is attractive in her is for him to decide; for my part, I would rather that it were for him than for me. It is a folly even for a fool, even such a fool as that!"