“It’s much better to ask her consent, and I’ll do it,” I whispered.
She sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little forward.
“I beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to our smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to assure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach Skerries.”
She raised her veil.
“I have no objection whatever,” she said in a low, sympathetic murmur. “I like the perfume of tobacco.” And, as if smitten by some sorrowful remembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.
I mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I said; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of the loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.
“You are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,” she observed, almost laughingly.
“'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,” was my reply.
Woman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for it; she knew it to be genuine.
Somehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who can trot a man’s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down, canter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by the excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at that particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest bidder, be he ever so modest—namely, himself. This young girl—for she could scarcely have passed her teens—possessed this marvellous gift, and, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself, usually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after topic—travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything—with a feverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to approach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little enterprise, doubt, and difficulty.