"You don't like him?"

"I like him very much. I don't _love_ him."

"The poor devil!"

"I don't believe he wants people to love him. It would bore him. No,
that's not quite just. He's kind, wonderfully kind, but he has no little
pleasantnesses. He says things in a very quiet way that make you feel
he's laughing at you, though he never does laugh. He said to me this
morning at breakfast, 'Well, Mathilde, was it a marvelous party?' That
made me feel as if I used the word 'marvelous' all the time, not a bit
as if he really wanted to know whether I had enjoyed myself last night."

"And did you?"

She gave him a rapid smile and went on:

"Now, my grandfather, my mother's father--his name is Lanley--(Mr. Lanley
evidently was not in active business, for it was plain that Wayne,
searching his memory, found nothing)--my grandfather often scolds me
terribly for my English,--says I talk like a barmaid, although I tell
him he ought not to know how barmaids talk,--but he never makes me feel
small. Sometimes Mr. Farron repeats, weeks afterward, something I've
said, word for word, the way I said it. It makes it sound so foolish. I'd
rather he said straight out that he thought I was a goose."

"Perhaps you wouldn't if he did."