as she caught the eye of Hope, whose
face lighted up in return, and who then sank back with a sort of sigh
of relief, as if she had at last seen somebody she cared for. The lady
waved an un-gloved hand, and drove by.

"Who is that?" asked Philip, eagerly. He was used to knowing every one.

"Hope's pet," said Kate, "and she who pets Hope, Lady Antwerp."

"Is it possible?" said Malbone. "That young creature? I fancied her
ladyship in spectacles, with little side curls. Men speak of her with
such dismay."

"Of course," said Kate, "she asks them sensible questions."

"That is bad," admitted Philip. "Nothing exasperates fashionable
Americans like a really intelligent foreigner. They feel as Sydney Smith
says the English clergy felt about Elizabeth Fry; she disturbs their
repose, and gives rise to distressing comparisons,--they long to burn
her alive. It is not their notion of a countess."

"I am sure it was not mine," said Hope; "I can hardly remember that she
is one; I only know that I like her, she is so simple and intelligent.
She might be a girl from a Normal School."

"It is because you are just that," said Kate, "that she likes you.
She came here supposing that we had all been at such schools. Then
she complained of us,--us girls in what we call good society, I
mean,--because, as she more than hinted, we did not seem to know
anything."

"Some of the mothers were angry," said Hope. "But Aunt Jane told her
that it was perfectly true, and that her ladyship had not yet seen the
best-educated girls in America, who were generally the daughters of old
ministers and well-to-do shopkeepers in small New England towns, Aunt
Jane said."

"Yes," said Kate, "she said that the best of those girls went to High
Schools and Normal Schools, and learned things thoroughly, you know;
but that we were only taught at boarding-schools and by governesses, and
came out at eighteen, and what could we know? Then came Hope, who had
been at those schools, and was the child of refined people too, and Lady
Antwerp was perfectly satisfied."

"Especially," said Hope, "when Aunt Jane told her that, after all,
schools did not do very much good, for if people were born stupid they
only became more tiresome by schooling. She said that she had forgotten
all she learned at school except the boundaries of ancient Cappadocia."

Aunt Jane's fearless sayings always passed current among her nieces; and
they drove on, Hope not being lowered in Philip'