“I fell dreaming before the fire in the midst of your wonderful, old-world things, and had to hurry into my clothes, and so I’m late,” she apologised.
“If only you found all you needed, mademoiselle——” said Bigourdin anxiously. “It is the provinces and not Paris.”
She assured him that Félise had seen to every conceivable want and he left her to her meal. Martin delivered his soup-plates into the arms of the chambermaid and hovered over Lucilla with the menu card.
“Will mademoiselle take the dinner?” he asked in French.
She regarded him calmly and humorously and nodded. He became aware that her eyes were of a deep, deep grey, full of light. He found it difficult not to keep on looking at them. Breaking away, however, he fetched her soup and went off to attend to the others. At every pause by her table he noted some new and incomparable attribute. When bending over the platter from which she helped herself, he saw that her hands were beautifully shaped, plump, with long thin fingers and with delicate markings of veins beneath the white skin. An upward glance caught more blue veins on the temples. Another time he was struck by the supple grace of her movements. There were infinite gleams in her splendid hair. The faintest suggestion of perfume arose from her garments. She declined the vegetable course and, declining, looked up at him and smiled. He thought he had never seen a brow so noble, a nose so exquisitely cut, lips so kind and mocking. Her face was that of a Romney duchess into which the thought and spiritual freedom of the twentieth century had entered. As he sped about the service, thrusting dishes beneath bearded or blue, ill-shaven chins, her face floated before his eyes; every now and then he stole a distant glance at it, and longed for the happy though transient moment when he should come close to it again.
While he was clearing her table for dessert she said:
“Why do you speak French to me, when you know I’m an American?”
“It is the custom of the house when a guest speaks such excellent French as mademoiselle.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said in English; “but it seems rather ridiculous for an American and an Englishman to converse in a foreign language.”
“How do you know I am English, mademoiselle?” he asked, his heart a-flutter at the unexpected interchange of words.