had, however, none of
the transports of affection. Her taste was satisfied by the love of
a handsome young fellow,--a typical Englishman,--who, if not exactly
original or ideal, was, she felt, of an universally accepted,
"hall-marked" standard, the legitimate outcome of a highly ordered,
carefully guarded civilization, whose repose was the absence of struggle
or ambition; a man whose regular features were not yet differentiated
from the rest of his class by any of those disturbing lines which people
call character. Everything was made ready for her, without care or
preparation; she had not even an ideal to realize or to modify. She
could slip without any jar or dislocation into this life which was just
saved from self-indulgence and sybaritic luxury by certain conventional
rules of activity and the occupation of amusement which, as obligations
of her position, even appeared to suggest the novel aspect of a DUTY!
She could accept all this without the sense of being an intruder in
an unbroken lineage--thanks to the consul's account of the Beverdales'
inheritance. She already pictured herself as the mistress of this fair
domain, the custodian of its treasures and traditions, and the dispenser
of its hospitalities, but--as she conscientiously believed--without
pride or vanity, in her position; only an intense and thoughtful
appreciation of it. Nor did she dream of ever displaying it
ostentatiously before her less fortunate fellow countrywomen; on the
contrary, she looked forward to their possible criticism of her casting
off all transatlantic ties with an uneasy consciousness that was perhaps
her nearest approach to patriotism. Yet, again, she reasoned that, as
her father was an Englishman, she was only returning to her old home.
As to her mother, she had already comforted herself by noticing certain
discrepancies in that lady's temperament, which led her to believe that
she herself alone inherited her father's nature--for her mother was, of
course, distinctly American! So little conscious was she of any possible
snobbishness in this belief, that in her superb naivete she would have
argued the point with the consul, and employed a wit and dialect that
were purely American.

She had slipped out of the Priory early that morning that she might
enjoy alone, unattended and unciceroned, the aspect of that vast estate
which might be hers for the mere accepting. Perhaps there was some
instinct of delicacy in her avoiding Lord Alge