"Heaven forbid!" cried the young man. Gertrude's eyes were fixed upon him almost insistently. He began to laugh again.
"I can easily be French, if that will please you."
"You are a foreigner of some sort," said Gertrude.
"Of some sort--yes; I suppose so. But who can say of what sort?
I don't think we have ever had occasion to settle the question.
You know there are people like that. About their country, their religion, their profession, they can't tell."
Gertrude stood there gazing; she had not asked him to sit down.
She had never heard of people like that; she wanted to hear.
"Where do you live?" she asked.
"They can't tell that, either!" said Felix. "I am afraid you will think they are little better than vagabonds.
I have lived anywhere--everywhere. I really think I have lived in every city in Europe." Gertrude gave a little long soft exhalation.
It made the young man smile at her again; and his smile made her blush a little. To take refuge from blushing she asked him if, after his long walk, he was not hungry or thirsty.
Her hand was in her pocket; she was fumbling with the little key that her sister had given her. "Ah, my dear young lady," he said, clasping his hands a little, "if you could give me, in charity, a glass of wine!"
Gertrude gave a smile and a little nod, and went quickly out of the room.
Presently she came back with a very large decanter in one hand and a plate in the other, on which was placed a big, round cake with a frosted top. Gertrude, in taking the cake from the closet, had had a moment of acute consciousness that it composed the refection of which her sister had thought that Mr. Brand would like to partake.
Her kinsman from across the seas was looking at the pale, high-hung engravings. When she came in he turned and smiled at her, as if they had been old friends meeting after a separation.
"You wait upon me yourself?" he asked. "I am served like the gods!"
She had waited upon a great many people, but none of them had ever told her that. The observation added a certain lightness to the step with which she went to a little table where there were some curious red glasses--glasses covered with little gold sprigs, which Charlotte used to dust every morning with her own hands.
Gertrude thought the glasses very handsome, and it was a pleasure to her to know that the wine was good; it was her father's famous madeira.
Felix Young thought it excellent; he wondered why he had been told that there was no wine in America. She cut him an immense ******** out of the cake, and again she thought of Mr. Brand.
Felix sat there, with his glass in one hand and his huge morsel of cake in the other--eating, drinking, smiling, talking. "I am very hungry," he said. "I am not at all tired; I am never tired.
But I am very hungry."
"You must stay to dinner," said Gertrude. "At two o'clock. They will all have come back from church; you will see the others."
"Who are the others?" asked the young man. "Describe them all."
"You will see for yourself. It is you that must tell me; now, about your sister."
"My sister is the Baroness Munster," said Felix.
On hearing that his sister was a Baroness, Gertrude got up and walked about slowly, in front of him. She was silent a moment.
She was thinking of it. "Why did n't she come, too?" she asked.
"She did come; she is in Boston, at the hotel."
"We will go and see her," said Gertrude, looking at him.
"She begs you will not!" the young man replied.
"She sends you her love; she sent me to announce her.
She will come and pay her respects to your father."