Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/184

176 If the reader has travelled in a foreign country—let us say in Bohemia—and is ignorant of the tongue, Czech, he has felt the irksomeness of a table d'hôte at which he has sat, and of which he has partaken, without being able to join in the general conversation. He has felt embarrassed, has longed for the dinner to be over, that he might retire to his solitary chamber. Yet, when there, he wearies over his loneliness, and descends to the coffee-room, there to sip his café noir, and smoke, and pare his nails, and turn over a Czech newspaper, make up his accounts, then sip again, again turn over the paper, re-examine his nails, and recalculate his expenditure, in weariful iteration, and long for the time when he can call for his bill and leave. But, if some one at an adjoining table says, "Ach! zu Englitsch!" how he leaps to eager dialogue, how he takes over his coffee-cup and cognac to the stranger's table; how he longs to hug the barbarian, who professes to "speaque a littelle Englitsch." How he clings to him, forgives him his blunders, opens a thirsty ear to his jargon, forces on him champagne and cigars, forgets the clock, his nails, his notes, the bill and the train, in the delight of having met one with whom he can for a moment forget his isolation.

If this be so when meeting with a foreigner, how much more cordial is our encounter with a pleasant Englishman. We at once seek out links of connection, to establish the fact of our having mutual acquaintances.

So did the impulse come on Saltren and overpower him. There was a community of ideas between him and Arminell; and he was swept away by his desire to find a companion, into forgetfulness of the promise he had made to his mother.

That he was doing wrong in telling the girl a secret, about which he had no right to let a hint fall without her father's knowledge and consent, could hardly be hid from his concsienceconscience [sic], but he refused to listen, and excused himself on grounds satisfactory to his vanity. It was good for