that the more charming a woman is the
more numerous, literally, are her definite social uses.

Eugenia herself, as we know, had plenty of leisure to enumerate her
uses. As I have had the honor of intimating, she had come four thousand
miles to seek her fortune; and it is not to be supposed that after this
great effort she could neglect any apparent aid to advancement. It is
my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass the
deportment of this remarkable woman I am obliged to express things
rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance, when I say
that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement in the person
of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards remembered that a
prudent archer has always a second bowstring. Eugenia was a woman of
finely-mingled motive, and her intentions were never sensibly gross.
She had a sort of aesthetic ideal for Clifford which seemed to her a
disinterested reason for taking him in hand. It was very well for a
fresh-colored young gentleman to be ingenuous; but Clifford, really, was
crude. With such a pretty face he ought to have prettier manners. She
would teach him that, with a beautiful name, the expectation of a large
property, and, as they said in Europe, a social position, an only son
should know how to carry himself.

Once Clifford had begun to come and see her by himself and for himself,
he came very often. He hardly knew why he should come; he saw her almost
every evening at his father's house; he had nothing particular to say to
her. She was not a young girl, and fellows of his age called only upon
young girls. He exaggerated her age; she seemed to him an old woman; it
was happy that the Baroness, with all her intelligence, was incapable of
guessing this. But gradually it struck Clifford that visiting old women
might be, if not a natural, at least, as they say of some articles of
diet, an acquired taste. The Baroness was certainly a very amusing old
woman; she talked to him as no lady--and indeed no gentleman--had ever
talked to him before.

"You should go to Europe and make the tour," she said to him one
afternoon. "Of course, on leaving college you will go."

"I don't want to go," Clifford declared. "I know some fellows who have
been to Europe. They say you can have better fun here."

"That depends. It depends upon your idea of fun. Your friends probably
were not introduced."

"Introduced?" Clifford demanded.

"They had no opportuni