He was polyglot himself, for that matter--as was the case too with so many of his friends and relations; for none of whom, more than for himself, was it anything but a common convenience.

The point was that in this young woman it was a beauty in itself, and almost a mystery: so, certainly, he had more than once felt in noting, on her lips, that rarest, among the Barbarians, of all civil graces, a perfect felicity in the use of Italian.

He had known strangers--a few, and mostly men--who spoke his own language agreeably; but he had known neither man nor woman who showed for it Charlotte's almost mystifying instinct.

He remembered how, from the first of their acquaintance, she had made no display of it, quite as if English, between them, his English so matching with hers, were their inevitable medium.

He had perceived all by accident--by hearing her talk before him to somebody else that they had an alternative as good; an alternative in fact as much better as the amusement for him was greater in watching her for the slips that never came.