"John Murray." "That's the
most remarkable thing about these Italians; they have such high-sounding
names for everything, and we are fools enough to be taken in by the
sound."

"It is a delusion that we are rather disposed to indulge in, generally,"
said Lizzy. "The words, 'your Majesty' or 'your Highness,' have their
own magic in them, even when the representatives respond but little to
the station."

[Illustration: 342]

"It was your father, I fancy, taught you that lesson," said he,
peevishly.

"What lesson do you mean?"

"To hold people of high rank cheaply; to imagine that they must be all
cheats and impositions."

"No," said she, calmly but resolutely. "If he taught me anything on this
subject, it was to attribute to persons of exalted station very lofty
qualities. What I have to fear is that my expectation will be far above
the reality. I can imagine what they might be, but I 'm not so sure it
is what I shall find them."

"You had better not say so to my sister-in-law," said Beecher,
jeeringly.

"It is not my intention," said she, with the same calm voice.

"I make that remark," resumed he, "because she has what some people
would call exaggerated notions about the superiority of the well-born
over all inferior classes; indeed, she is scarcely just in her estimate
of low people."

"Low people are really to be pitied!" said she, with a slight laugh; and
Beecher stole a quick glance at her, and was silent.

He was not able long to maintain this reserve. The truth was, he felt an
invincible desire to recur to the class in life from which Lizzy came,
and to speak disparagingly of all who were humbly born. Not that
this vulgarity was really natural to him,--far from it. With all his
blemishes and defects he was innately too much a gentleman to descend to
this. The secret impulse was to be revenged of Grog Davis; to have the
one only possible vengeance on the man that had "done him;" and even
though that was only to be exacted through Davis's daughter, it
pleased him. And so he went on to tell of the prejudices--absurd, of
course--that persons like Lady Georgina would persist in entertaining
about common people. "You 'll have to be so careful in all your
intercourse with her," said he; "easy, natural, of course, but never
familiar; she would n't stand it."

"I will be careful," said Lizzy, calmly.

"The chances are, she 'll find out some one of the name, and ask you, in
her own half-careless way, 'Ar