ner."

"Pray, sir, may I ask," Mr. Monson now coming in, "did you pay for
Jule's handkerchief? Hang me, if I ever saw a more vulgar thing in my
life."

"The opinion is not likely to induce me to say yes," answered the
father, half-laughing, and yet half-angry at his son's making such
allusions before Betts--"never mind him, my dear; the handkerchief is
not half as expensive as his own cigars."

"It shall be as thoroughly smoked, nevertheless," rejoined John, who
was as near being spoilt, and escaping, as was at all necessary. "Ah,
Julie, Julie, I'm ashamed of thee."

This was an inauspicious commencement for an evening from which so much
happiness had been anticipated, but Mrs. Monson coming down, and the
carriages driving to the door, Mademoiselle Hennequin was summoned, and
the whole party left the house.

As a matter of course, it was a little out of the common way that the
governess was asked to make one, in the invitations given to the
Monsons. But Mademoiselle Hennequin was a person of such perfect bon
ton, had so thoroughly the manners of a lady, and was generally reputed
so accomplished, that most of the friends of the family felt themselves
bound to notice her. There was another reason, too, which justice
requires I should relate, though it is not so creditable to the young
lady, as those already given. From some quarter, or other, a rumor had
got abroad that Miss Monson's governess was of a noble family, a
circumstance that I soon discovered had great influence in New York,
doubtless by way of expiation for the rigid democratical notions that
so universally pervade its society. And here I may remark, en passant,
that while nothing is considered so disreputable in America as to be
"aristocratic" a word of very extensive signification, as it embraces
the tastes, the opinions, the habits, the virtues, and sometimes the
religion of the offending party--on the other hand, nothing is so
certain to attract attention as nobility. How many poor Poles have I
seen dragged about and made lions of, merely because they were reputed
noble, though the distinction in that country is pretty much the same
as that which exists in one portion of this great republic, where one
half the population is white, and the other black; the former making
the noble, and the latter the serf.

{make one = be included; bon ton = superior manners and culture; notice
her = include her socially; "aristocratic" = Cooper was hypersensitive
to