He never gave me, as he used to, the least feeling of constraint; he always seemed perfectly at his ease.

And he had acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire--the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering eye.

He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech that he was following them, and intelligently sympathizing with them.
He did not then tell me much about himself.

He confessed that the most rapturous feeling he had known since he set off on his travels, was the hour or two as he whirled through the flat pasture-lands and the pleasant green of Kent.
He gave me no detailed descriptions of adventures, but hinted in a suggestive way that he had seen much, and thought more.

"I think I have learnt myself very fairly," was the only remark he made about his own personal experience.
"To finish my tour," he said, "I want to see something of my native land.