“Very often I spend my evenings in a drawing-room.”

“Oh, Lord!  Do most young Englishmen carry on in the same proper way?”

“Why not?”

“Don’t they go to music-halls, please, and dancing cribs, and such?”

“Perhaps.  But what does it concern us to know what some men do?”

“Oh, not much.  Only if I were a man like you, I wouldn’t consent to be a tame tom-cat—­that is all; but perhaps you like it.”

She meant to insult and offend him so that he should not come any more.

But she did not succeed.  He only laughed, feeling that he was getting below the surface, and sat down beside the piano.

“You amuse me,” he said, “and you astonish me.  You are, in fact, the most astonishing person I ever met.  For instance, you come from America, and you talk pure London slang with a cockney twang.  How did it get there?”

In fact, it was not exactly London slang, but a patois or dialect, learned partly from her husband, partly from her companions, and partly brought from Gloucester.

“I don’t know—­I never asked.  It came wrapped up in brown paper, perhaps, with a string round it.”

“You have lived in America all your life, and you look more like an Englishwoman than any other girl I have ever seen.”

“Do I?  So much the better for the English girls; they can’t do better than take after me.  But perhaps—­most likely, in fact—­you think that American girls all squint, perhaps, or have got humpbacks?  Anything else?”

“You were brought up in a little American village, and yet you play in the style of a girl who has had the best masters.”

She did not explain—­it was not necessary to explain—­that her master had been her father who was a teacher of music.

“I can’t help it, can I?” she asked; “I can’t help it if I turned out different to what you expected.  People sometimes do, you know.  And when you don’t approve of a girl, it’s English manners, I suppose, to tell her so—­kind of encourages her to persevere, and pray for better luck next time, doesn’t it?  It’s simple too, and prevents any foolish errors—­no mistake afterward, you see.  I say, are you going to come here often; because, if you are, I shall go away back to the States or somewhere, or stay upstairs in my own room.  You and me won’t get on very well together, I am afraid.”

“I don’t think you will see me very often,” he replied.  “That is improbable; yet I dare say I shall come here as often as I usually do.”

“What do you mean by that?” She looked sharply and suspiciously at him.  He repeated his words, and she perceived that there was meaning in them, and she felt uneasy.

“I don’t understand at all,” she said; “Clara tells me that this house is mine.  Now—­don’t you know—­I don’t intend to invite any but my own friends to visit me in my own house?”

“That seems reasonable.  No one can expect you to invite people who are not your friends.”