I have before now visited at the houses
of some whom you call your friends."
"Why not?" she asked him. "I should look upon it as the most natural
thing in the world that we were acquainted. But why do you say 'your
country'? Are you not an American?"
He looked at her with a very faint smile, a smile which had nothing in
it of pleasantness or mirth.
"I have so few secrets," he said. "The only one which I elect to keep
is the secret of my nationality."
She raised her eyebrows.
"Then you can no longer," she observed, "be considered what my brother
and I once thought you--a man of mysteries--for with your voice and
accent it is very certain that you are either English or American."
"If it affords you any further clue, then," he replied, "let me
confide in you that if there is one country in this world which I
detest, it is England; one race of people whom I abominate, it is
the English."
She showed her surprise frankly, but his manner encouraged no further
confidence. She touched the bell, and he bowed over her fingers.
"My friend Phillips," he said, in formal accents, as the butler stood
upon the threshold, "will never live, I fear, to offer you all the
gratitude he feels, but you are doing a very kind and a very wonderful
action, Miss Beverley, and one which I think will bring its
own reward.
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