'What nonsense!' cried Alfred, good-humouredly. 'You know all about it--at all events, you used to. There--we've gone and let her miss Lambeth Palace! Look, dear, quick, while it's still in sight--that's where the Archbishop of Canterbury hangs out.'
'Oh,' said Gladys, 'I've heard of _him_.'
'And isn't that Cheyne Walk, or some such place, that we're coming to on the right there?' said Alfred.
'Yes,' said Granville, briefly; 'that's Cheyne Walk.'
Luckily the Bride asked no questions--indeed, she was inclined to be silent--for of all localities impossible to discuss with an uneducated person, Granville felt that Chelsea and Cheyne Walk were the most completely out of the question. And that the Bride was a sadly uneducated person was sufficiently clear, if only from her manner of speaking. Granville accepted the fact with creditable equanimity--he had prophesied as much--and sat down to smoke a cigarette and to diagnose, if he could, this new and wonderful dialect of his sister-in-law. It was neither Cockney nor Yankee, but a nasal blend of both: it was a lingo that declined to let the vowels run alone, but trotted them out in ill-matched couples, with discordant and awful consequences; in a word, it was Australasiatic of the worst description. Nor was the speech of Alfred free from the taint--Alfred, whose pronunciation at least had been correct before he went out; while the common colloquialisms of the pair made Granville shudder.
'If I did not hope for such surprisingly good looks,' said he to himself, 'yet even _I_ was not prepared for _quite_ so much vulgarity! Poor dear Alfred!'
Yet, as she leant upon the rail in the summer sunlight, silent and pensive, there was certainly no suggestion of vulgarity in her attitude; it was rather one of unstudied grace and ease. Nor was there anything at all vulgar in the quiet travelling dress that fitted her tall full form so closely and so well. Nor was her black hair cut down to within an inch of her eyebrows--as, of course, it should have been--or worn in a fringe at all. Nor was there anything the least objectionable in the poise of the small graceful head, or in the glance of the bold dark eyes, or in the set of the full, firm, crimson lips; and thus three more excellent openings--for the display of vulgarity--were completely thrown away. In fact, if she had never spoken, Granville would have been at a loss to find a single fault in her. Alas! about her speech there could be no two opinions--it bewrayed her.