Denis was spell-bound; the dose, he
artlessly imagined, was enough to kill a horse. Far from being damaged,
Miss Wilberforce took a chair beside him, and began to converse.
Charmingly she talked; all about England. As he listened he grew
delighted, entranced. She was different, somehow, from all the other
ladies he had lately met on the Continent. She was altogether
different. Whence came it, he wondered?
Then, as the discourse proceeded, he began to realize what was the
matter with them. It was odd, he thought, that he had not noticed it
before. Miss Wilberforce made him realize wherein the difference lay.
They spoke English, it was true; but they had all taken on a
Continental outlook; alien phrases, expressions, affectations;
cosmopolitan airs and graces that jarred on his frank, untarnished
English nature. This one was otherwise. She was old England, through
and through. The conversation cheered him to an unusual degree--among
all those foreign people he felt strangely drawn towards this wistful
lady who could talk so naturally and conjure up, by the mere power of
words, a breath of his own homestead in the Midlands.
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