Rowland received an impression that, for reasons of her own, she was playing a part.

What was the part and what were her reasons?
She was interesting; Rowland wondered what were her domestic secrets.

If her mother was a daughter of the great Republic, it was to be supposed that the young girl was a flower of the American soil; but her beauty had a robustness and tone uncommon in the somewhat facile loveliness of our western maidenhood.
She spoke with a vague foreign accent, as if she had spent her life in strange countries.

The little Italian apparently divined Rowland's mute imaginings, for he presently stepped forward, with a bow like a master of ceremonies.

"I have not done my duty," he said, "in not announcing these ladies.