bitterly. But it seemed to her that all these amiable
diatribes in exquisite French were directed at her New York, and it
must be admitted that she was humiliated and enraged. It was a personal,
indeed, a family matter. Her father, her mother, her relatives, and
friends were all in some degree exactly the kind of persons whose
speech, habits, and opinions she must conscientiously avoid. But for
the instinct of summing up values, circumstances, and intentions, it is
probable that she would have lost her head, let loose her temper and her
tongue, and have become insubordinate. But the quickness of perception
which had revealed practical potentialities to old Reuben Vanderpoel,
revealed to her the value of French which was perfectly fluent, a voice
which was musical, movements which were grace, manners which had a
still beauty, and comparing these things with others less charming
she listened and restrained herself, learning, marking, and inwardly
digesting with a cleverness most enviable.

Among her fellow pensionnaires she met with discomforting illuminations,
which were fine discipline also, though if she herself had been a less
intellectual creature they might have been embittering. Without doubt
Betty, even at twelve years, was intellectual. Hers was the practical
working intellect which begins duty at birth and does not lay down its
tools because the sun sets. The little and big girls who wrote their
exercises at her side did not deliberately enlighten her, but she
learned from them in vague ways that it was not New York which was the
centre of the earth, but Paris, or Berlin, Madrid, London, or Rome.
Paris and London were perhaps more calmly positive of themselves than
other capitals, and were a little inclined to smile at the lack of
seriousness in other claims. But one strange fact was more predominant
than any other, and this was that New York was not counted as a
civilised centre at all; it had no particular existence. Nobody
expressed this rudely; in fact, it did not acquire the form of actual
statement at any time. It was merely revealed by amiable and ingenuous
unconsciousness of the circumstance that such a part of the world
expected to be regarded or referred to at all. Betty began early to
realise that as her companions did not talk of Timbuctoo or Zanzibar,
so they did not talk of New York. Stockholm or Amsterdam seemed,
despite their smallness, to be considered. No one denied the presence of
Zanzibar on