William Dean Howells

Between the Dark and the Daylight William Dean Howells

In his fat frenzy, which Lanfear felt to be pathetic, the old gentleman glanced at him, and then abruptly demanded: "Are you an American?" We knew each other abroad in some mystical way, and Lanfear did not try to deny the fact. "Oh, well, then," the stranger said, as if the fact made everything right, "will you kindly tell my daughter, on that bench by the door yonder"-he pointed with a bag, and dropped a roll of rugs from under his arm-"that I'll be with her as soon as I've looked after the trunks? Tell her not to move till I come. Heigh! Here! Take hold of these, will you?" He caught the sleeve of a facchino who came wandering by, and heaped him with his burdens, and then pushed ahead of the man in the direction of the baggage-room with a sort of mastery of the situation which struck Lanfear as springing from desperation rather than experience. Lanfear stood a moment hesitating. Then a glance at the girl on the bench, drooping a little forward in freeing her face from the veil that hung from her pretty hat, together with a sense of something quaintly charming in the confidence shown him on such purely compatriotic grounds, decided him to do just what he had been asked. The.