Clare, half impatiently.

He stared at her a moment and then broke into a laugh, and Clare, very much to her own surprise and annoyance, laughed too, in spite of herself. That broke the ice. When two people have laughed together over something one of them has said, there is no denying the acquaintance.

“It was really awfully kind of you!” he exclaimed, his eyes still laughing. “It was horridly rude of me to say anything at all, but I really couldn’t help it. If I could get anybody to introduce me, so that I could apologise properly, I would, you know, but in this place—”

He looked towards the German family and the English old maids, in a helpless sort of way, and then laughed again.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Clare rather coldly.

“No—I suppose not,” he answered, growing graver at once. “And I think it is allowed—isn’t it?—to speak to one’s neighbour at a table d’hôte, you know. Not but what it was awfully rude of me, all the same,” he added hastily.

“Oh no. Not at all.”

Clare stared at the wall opposite and leaned back in her chair.

“Oh! thanks awfully! I was afraid you might think so, you know.”

Mrs. Bowring leaned forward as her daughter leaned back. Seeing that the latter had fallen into conversation with the stranger, she was too much a woman of the world not to speak to him at once in order to avoid any awkwardness when they next met, for he could not possibly have spoken first to her across the young girl.

“Is it your first visit to Amalfi?” she inquired, with as much originality as is common in such cases.

Brook leaned forward too, and looked over at the elder woman.

“Yes,” he answered, “I was with a party, and they dropped me here last night. I was to meet my people here, but they haven’t turned up yet, so I’m seeing the sights. I went up to Ravello this morning—you know, that place on the hill. There’s an awfully good view from there, isn’t there?”

Clare thought his fluency developed very quickly when he spoke to her mother. As he leaned forward she could not help seeing his face, and she looked at him closely, for the first time, and with some curiosity. He was handsome, and had a wonderfully frank and good-humoured expression. He was not in the least a “beauty” man—she thought he might be a soldier or a 

 Prev. P 34/145 next