"We want you to give us an opinion about it, Miss Fraenkel," said Bill, bringing out the letter and giving it to her. She accepted the packet in some uncertainty.
"I!" she said, "give an opinion? I don't get it, I'm afraid."
And she did. We sat round her, as she sat on the broad flat box that Mac called a "throne," in a semicircle, and studied the varying expressions that crossed her face as her eyes travelled down the pages. It occurred to me after I had retired to my room that night, that an English girl of twenty-one would not have weathered the concentrated gaze of three strangers with such serenity of features. An observant and invisible critic might have imagined us to have been awaiting the decision of a young and charming Sibyl, so intently did we gaze and so neglectful was she of our regard. This apparent coldness was explained to me by Bill as a characteristic of the American woman. "They like to be admired," she told me. "And so they don't mind if you do stare at them."
Miss Fraenkel looked up with a smile of comprehension.
"What a perfectly lovely letter!" she exclaimed.
Bill took the sheets and thrust them into the envelope.
"He must be a very interesting man, don't you think?"
"Surely! Oh, I should give anything to see his home. You've described it to me, so I know all about it. Gainsborough landscape, and red tiles on the cottages!" She clasped her hands.
"I mean the man my cousin met," said Bill, gently. "Carville."
"Oh, him!" Miss Fraenkel looked at each of us for an instant to catch some inkling of our behaviour.
"Same name as----" and Mac jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
"We thought," I said heavily, "that this man in England, you know, might have----" I stopped, dismayed by her lack of appreciation. She seemed unable to grasp the simple links of our brilliant theory. We had omitted to calculate upon the indifference of the modern American temperament to names. A foul murder had been committed a short time back by a gambler named Fraenkel, yet she would have laughed at the suggestion that such a coincidence should cause her any annoyance.
"I don't get it," she said, smiling, and we saw plainly enough that she did not get it. We were crushed. I explained in more detail the reason for which we had ventured to connect the two stories. We could see her trying to understand.