tter, and she sent the Baroness a very civil
message. Acton had wished their visitor to come to dinner; but Madame M;
auunster preferred to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that
if she should go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also
be asked, and it had seemed to her that the peculiar character of the
occasion would be best preserved in a tete-a-tete with her host. Why the
occasion should have a peculiar character she explained to no one. As
far as any one could see, it was simply very pleasant. Acton came for
her and drove her to his door, an operation which was rapidly performed.
His house the Baroness mentally pronounced a very good one; more
articulately, she declared that it was enchanting. It was large and
square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept shrubbery, and was
approached, from the gate, by a short drive. It was, moreover, a much
more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's, and was more redundantly
upholstered and expensively ornamented. The Baroness perceived that her
entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point.
And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries--trophies of his
sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory;
sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of
beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind
the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered
with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things
were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a
complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it
a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and
though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as
fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she
dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own
hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household
fairy. Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things;
she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was
difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares. She came to meet
Madame M; auunster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost
nothing, and the Baroness again reflected--she had had occasion to do
so before--that American girls had no manners. She disliked this little
American girl, and