"Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American or English," she broke out. "If once I knew I could talk to you accordingly."
"Talk to us anyhow and we shall be thankful," Ralph liberally answered.
She 昀xed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character that reminded him of large polished buttons—buttons that might have fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a button is not usually deemed human,but there was something in Miss Stackpole＇s gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely embarrassed—less inviolate, more dishonoured,than he liked. This sensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. "I don＇t suppose that you＇re going to undertake to persuade me that you＇re an American," she said.