"I think I am not so dull, my friend!"
He made a blue flash at me with his eyes, then smiled and shook his
head.
"Yes, you are right," he answered, re-beginning his fast pace over the
carpet. "It was she that I meant in Lucerne--I don't see why I should
not tell you. In Paris she said she didn't want me to see her
again until I could be--friendly--the old way instead of something
considerably different, which I'd grown to be. Well, I've just told her
not only that I'd behave like a friend, but that I'd changed and felt
like one. Pretty much of a lie that was!" He laighed, without any
amusement. "But it was successful, and I suppose I can keep it up. At
any rate we're going over to Venice with her and her mother to-morrow.
Afterwards, we'll see them in Naples just before they sail."
"To Venice with them!" I could not repress crying out.
"Yes; we join parties for two days," he said, and stopped at a window
and looked out attentively at nothing before he went on: "It won't be
very long, and I don't suppose it will ever happen again. The other man
is to meet them in Rome. He's a countryman of yours, and I believe--I
believe it's--about--settled!"
He pronounced these last words in an even voice, but how slowly! Not
more slowly than the construction of my own response, which I heard
myself making:
"This countryman of mine--who is he?"
"One of your kind of Kentucky Colonels," Poor Jr. laughed mournfully.
At first I did not understand; then it came to me that he had sometimes
previously spoken in that idiom of the nobles, and that it had been
his custom to address one of his Parisian followers, a vicomte, as
"Colonel."
"What is his name?"
"I can't pronounce it, and I don't know how to spell it," he answered.
"And that doesn't bring me to the verge of the grave! I can bear to
forget it, at least until we get to Naples!"
He turned and went to the door, saying, cheerfully: "Well, old
horse-thief" (such had come to be his name for me sometimes, and it was
pleasant to hear), "we must be dressing. They're at this hotel, and we
dine with them to-night."