r. He
asked her, presently, if she would play. She might be, and certainly
was, vulgar; but she could play well and she knew good music. People
generally think that good music softens manners, and does not permit
those who play and practice it to be vulgar. But, concerning this
young person, so much could not be said with any truth.

"You play very well. Where did you learn? Who was your master?" Arnold
asked.

She began to reply, but stopped short. He had very nearly caught her.

"Don't ask questions," she said. "I told you not to ask questions
before. Where should I learn, but in America? Do you suppose no one
can play the piano, except in England? Look here," she glanced at her
cousin. "Do you, Mr. Arbuthnot, always spend your evenings like this?"

"How like this?"

"Why, going around in a swallow tail to drawing-rooms with the women,
like a tame tom-cat. If you do, you must be a truly good young man. If
you don't, what do you do?"

"Very often I spend my evenings in a drawing-room."

"Oh, Lord! Do most young Englishmen carry on in the same proper way?"

"Why not?"

"Don't they go to music-halls, please, and dancing cribs, and such?"

"Perhaps. But what does it concern us to know what some men do?"

"Oh, not much. Only if I were a man like you, I wouldn't consent to be
a tame tom-cat--that is all; but perhaps you like it."

She meant to insult and offend him so that he should not come any
more.

But she did not succeed. He only laughed, feeling that he was getting
below the surface, and sat down beside the piano.

"You amuse me," he said, "and you astonish me. You are, in fact, the
most astonishing person I ever met. For instance, you come from
America, and you talk pure London slang with a cockney twang. How did
it get there?"

In fact, it was not exactly London slang, but a patois or dialect,
learned partly from her husband, partly from her companions, and
partly brought from Gloucester.

"I don't know--I never asked. It came wrapped up in brown paper,
perhaps, with a string round it."

"You have lived in America all your life, and you look more like an
Englishwoman than any other girl I have ever seen."

"Do I? So much the better for the English girls; they can't do better
than take after me. But perhaps--most likely, in fact--you think that
American girls all squint, perhaps, or have got humpbacks? Anything
else?"

"You were brought up in a little American village, and yet you play in
th