"My daughter--Miss Gerald, Mr.--"
"Lanfear--Dr. Lanfear," he said, accepting the introduction; and the
girl bowed.
"Oh, doctor, eh?" the father said, with a certain impression. "Going to
stop here?"
"A few days," Lanfear answered, making way for the forward movement
which the others began.
"Well, well! I'm very much obliged to you, very much, indeed; and I'm
sure my daughter is."
The girl said, "Oh yes, indeed," rather indifferently, and then as they
passed him, while he stood lifting his hat, she turned radiantly on him.
"Thank you, ever so much!" she said, with the gentle voice which he had
already thought charming.
The father called back: "I hope we shall meet again. We are going to the
Sardegna."
Lanfear had been going to the Sardegna himself, but while he bowed he
now decided upon another hotel.
The mystery, whatever it was, that the brave, little, fat father was
carrying off so bluffly, had clearly the morbid quality of unhealth in
it, and Lanfear could not give himself freely to a young pleasure in the
girl's dark beauty of eyes and hair, her pale, irregular, piquant face,
her slender figure and flowing walk. He was in the presence of something
else, something that appealed to his scientific side, to that which was
humane more than that which was human in him, and abashed him in the
other feeling. Unless she was out of her mind there was no way of
accounting for her behavior, except by some caprice which was itself
scarcely short of insanity. She must have thought she knew him when he
approached, and when she addressed him those first words; but when he
had tried to set her right she had not changed; and why had she denied
her father, and then hailed him with joy when he came back to her? She
had known that she intended to stop at San Remo, but she had not known
where she had stopped when she asked what place it was. She was
consciously an invalid of some sort, for she spoke of getting well under
sunsets like that which had now waned, but what sort of invalid was she?