bly no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice--a
voice not rich but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her
companions in Mr. Touchett's carriage she struck him as not all in the
large type, the type of horrid "headings," that he had expected. She
answered the enquiries made of her by Isabel, however, and in which the
young man ventured to join, with copious lucidity; and later, in the
library at Gardencourt, when she had made the acquaintance of Mr.
Touchett (his wife not having thought it necessary to appear) did more
to give the measure of her confidence in her powers.

"Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American
or English," she broke out. "If once I knew I could talk to you
accordingly."

"Talk to us anyhow and we shall be thankful," Ralph liberally answered.

She fixed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character
that reminded him of large polished buttons--buttons that might have
fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the
reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a
button is not usually deemed human, but there was something in Miss
Stackpole's gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely
embarrassed--less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This
sensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her
company, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. "I don't
suppose that you're going to undertake to persuade me that you're an
American," she said.

"To please you I'll be an Englishman, I'll be a Turk!"

"Well, if you can change about that way you're very welcome," Miss
Stackpole returned.

"I'm sure you understand everything and that differences of nationality
are no barrier to you," Ralph went on.

Miss Stackpole gazed at him still. "Do you mean the foreign languages?"

"The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit--the genius."

"I'm not sure that I understand you," said the correspondent of the
Interviewer; "but I expect I shall before I leave."

"He's what's called a cosmopolite," Isabel suggested.

"That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. I must say
I think patriotism is like charity--it begins at home."

"Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Stackpole?" Ralph enquired.

"I don't know where it begins, but I know where it ends. It ended a long
time before I got here."

"Don't you like it over here?" asked Mr. Touchett with his aged