“Because I like her a great deal better than any other girl I ever saw.”
In spite of herself, the Lady smiled at the unqualified terms of his
reply.
“It hasn’t taken you long to find it out.”
“No. But what’s the use of waiting to make up your mind about a thing of
that sort?” Barth responded, as he plunged his hands into his trouser
pockets. “You like a person, or else you don’t. I like Miss Howard; but,
by George, I can’t understand her in the least!”
“Is there any use of trying?” the Lady inquired.
Barth stared at her blankly.
“Oh, rather! How else would I know how to get on with her?”
“But, by your own story, you don’t succeed in getting on with her.”
Barth closed the circle of her argument.
“No. Because I can’t seem to understand her.”
“Are you sure she understands herself?”
“Oh, yes. Miss Howard is very clever, you know.”
“Perhaps. It doesn’t always follow. And are you sure she cares to have
you understand her?”
The young Englishman winced at the question.
“What should she have against me?” he asked directly.
“I am not saying that she has anything,” the Lady answered, in swift
evasion. “Sometimes it is to their best friends that girls show their
most contradictory sides.”
“Oh. You mean it is one of her American ways?”
“Yes, if you choose to call it that.”
Barth shook his head.
“Miss Howard is very American,” he observed a little regretfully.
The Lady smiled.
“And, my dear boy, so are you very British.”
“Of course. I mean to be,” Barth answered quietly.
“And perhaps Miss Howard finds it hard to understand your British ways.”
Barth looked perplexed.
“Oh, no. I think not,” he said slowly. “She never acts at all
embarrassed, when she is with me. In fact,” he laughed deprecatingly; “I
am generally the one to be embarrassed, when we are together.”
There was a short pause. Then Barth continued thoughtfully, as if from
the heart of his reverie,—
“And I didn’t like her especially, at first. She seemed a
bit—er—cocksure and—er—energetic. Now I am beginning to like her
more and more.”
“Have you seen much of her?”
Barth shook his head.
“No. It is only once that we have had any real talk together. That was
yesterday, at the library. It’s a queer old place, and one talks there
in spite of one’s self. We had a good time. But generally those other
fellows are around in the way.”
The Lady raised her brows interrogatively.
“Mr. Brock and that Frenchman,” Barth explained. “They are always with
her; they haven’t any hesitation in coming into the drawing-room and
carrying her off, just as I am getting ready to talk to her.”
A blot on the Lady’s account book demanded her full attention for a
moment. Then she looked up at Barth again.
“Why don’t you try the same tactics?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why don’t you carry her off, just as Mr. Brock is getting ready to talk
to her?”
“Because he is so quick that he gets right about it, before I have time
to begin. Mr. Brock has a good deal of the American way, himself,” Mr.
Cecil Barth added, with an accent of extreme disfavor.
The Lady smiled again.
“I think you’ll have to develop some American ways, yourself, Mr.
Barth,” she suggested.
Again the note of dejection came into his voice.
“I tried. Tried it, this afternoon.”
“And?” she said interrogatively.
“It was all wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did it just as Mr. Brock does. I went into
the drawing-room and found them together, just the way he has so often
found us. I began to talk to her just as he does, only of course I
wouldn’t think of chaffing her. You know he chaffs her, and she can’t
seem to make him stop,” Barth added, in hasty explanation.
“What did you talk to her about?” the Lady queried.
“That’s just it. I didn’t get started talking at all. I just asked her
if she wouldn’t like to talk.”
Once more the Lady bent over the blot.
“What did you invite her to talk about?” she asked quietly.
“Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré and all that.”