“What officer, papa? When?”
“You know; there by the band-stand, at the Swiss Dairy.”
She stared blankly at him, and it was clear that it was all as if it had not been with her. He insisted, and then she said: “Perhaps I thought I knew him, and was afraid I should hurt his feelings if I didn’t recognize him. But I don’t remember it at all.” The curves of her mouth drooped, and her eyes grieved, so that her father had not the heart to say more. She left them, and when he was alone with Lanfear he said:
“You see how it is!”
“Yes, I saw how it was before. But what do you wish to do?”
“Do you mean that he will keep it up?”
“Decidedly, he’ll keep it up. He has every right to from his point of view.”
“Oh, well, then, my dear fellow, you must stop it, somehow. You’ll know how to do it.”
“I?” said Lanfear, indignantly; but his vexation was not so great that he did not feel a certain pleasure in fulfilling this strangest part of his professional duty, when at the beginning of their next excursion he put Miss Gerald into the victoria with her father and fell back to the point at which he had seen the lieutenant waiting to haunt their farther progress. He put himself plumply in front of the officer and demanded in very blunt Italian: “What do you want?”
The lieutenant stared him over with potential offence, in which his delicately pencilled mustache took the shape of a light sneer, and demanded in his turn, in English much better than Lanfear’s Italian: “What right have you to ask?”