He finished playing the hand and scored his points before he spoke.

Then he turned to Norgate.
"Your gift of acquiring languages in a short space of time is most extraordinary, my young friend! Since yesterday you have become able to speak German, eh?
Prodigious!" Norgate smiled without embarrassment.

The moment was a critical one, portentous to an extent which no one at that table could possibly have realised.
"I am afraid," he confessed, "that when I found that I had a fellow traveller in my coupe I felt most ungracious and unsociable.

I was in a thoroughly bad temper and indisposed for conversation.

The simplest way to escape from it seemed to be to plead ignorance of any language save my own." Selingman chuckled audibly.