Lydia waited awhile for him to say something more, but he added nothing, and she observed, with a furtive look: “I presume you've seen some very severe storms at sea.”
“No,” Staniford answered, “I haven't. I've been over several times, but I've never seen anything alarming. I've experienced the ordinary seasickening tempestuousness.”
“Have you—have you ever been in Italy?” asked Lydia, after another pause.
“Yes,” he said, “twice; I'm very fond of Italy.” He spoke of it in a familiar tone that might well have been discouraging to one of her total unacquaintance with it. Presently he added of his own motion, looking at her with his interest in her as a curious study, “You're going to Venice, I think Mr. Dunham told me.”
“Yes,” said Lydia.
“Well, I think it's rather a pity that you shouldn't arrive there directly, without the interposition of Trieste.” He scanned her yet more closely, but with a sort of absence in his look, as if he addressed some ideal of her.
“Why?” asked Lydia, apparently pushed to some self-assertion by this way of being looked and talked at.
“It's the strangest place in the world,” said Staniford; and then he mused again. “But I suppose—” He did not go on, and the word fell again to Lydia.
“I'm going to visit my aunt, who is staying there. She was where I live, last summer, and she told us about it. But I couldn't seem to understand it.”
“No one can understand it, without seeing it.”