Mrs. Farnaby impatiently shook me by the arm. “American girls or English?” she reiterated, more obstinately than ever. Mr. Farnaby gave her one look. If he could have put her on the blazing fire and have burnt her up in an instant by an effort of will, I believe he would have made the effort. He saw that I was observing him, and turned quickly from his wife to me. His ruddy face was pale with suppressed rage. My early arrival had given Mrs. Farnaby an opportunity of speaking to me, which he had not anticipated in inviting me to dinner. “Come and see my pictures,” he said. His wife still held me fast. Whether he liked it or not, I had again no choice but to answer her. “Some American girls, and some English,” I said. Her eyes opened wider and wider in unutterable expectation. She suddenly advanced her face so close to mine, that I felt her hot breath on my cheeks as the next words burst their way through her lips. “Born in England?” “No. Born at Tadmor.” She dropped my arm. The light died out of her eyes in an instant. In some inconceivable way, I had utterly destroyed some secret expectation that she had fixed on me. She actually left me on the sofa, and took a chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. Mr. Farnaby, turning paler and paler, stepped up to her as she changed her place. I rose to look at the pictures on the wall nearest to me. You remarked the extraordinary keenness of my sense of hearing, while we were fellow passengers on the steamship. When he stooped over her, and whispered in her ear, I heard him--though nearly the whole breadth of the room was between us. “You hell-cat!”--that was what Mr. Farnaby said to his wife. The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour after seven. In quick succession, the guests at the dinner now entered the room.