Frank sat mute as a fish.
“He is of the type I rather admire,” she said, with a suspicious note in her voice. “You know, Frank,” she lifted a naïvely impudent, grave little face to his, “I always did like a dark, clean-shaven man!”
Frank himself was as dark and clean-shaven as it was possible to be, and the corners of his mouth trembled at her audacity, as he turned away.
“He told me such a delicious story yesterday,” she went on, her face breaking up into dimples. “It was about a little girl upon whose mother a horrid old woman was calling. When the old woman got up to depart, she said to the child, ‘You’ll come and see me, my dear, won’t you?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ said the child, ‘But you don’t know where I live?’ ‘Yes, I do,’ said the child, nodding. ‘I know who is your next-door neighbor.’ ‘Who is that?’ says the old woman. ‘Why, mother says you are next door to a fool!’”
But Frank did not smile. It is curious that a man’s sense of humor is usually entirely in abeyance when matters of stern import engross him, while a woman’s is usually at its keenest when tragedy is in the air.
“What do people think at the hotel?” he burst out in the undertone both had maintained throughout the conversation.
“That I am a widow,” she said coolly; “that is to say, if they turn up the hotel list of visitors.”
“What name have you inscribed?” he said coldly.
“Fenella Ffrench. I suppose I have a right to my own name?”
“And the child’s?”