When she had recovered herself she tried again.
"English country is so pretty," she said, when she thought she was quite sure that her voice would not tremble.

"I do so like the hedges and the darling little red-roofed cottages." It was an innocent tentative at saying something agreeable which might propitiate him.

She was beginning to realise that she was continually making efforts to propitiate him.

But one of the forms of unpleasantness most enjoyable to him was the snubbing of any gentle effort at palliating his mood.

He condescended in this case no response whatever, but merely continued staring contemptuously before him.
"It is so picturesque, and so unlike America," was the pathetic little commonplace she ventured next.