and if he was a dose, as
Selina had described him, he could only operate beneficently. There were
moments when Laura's heart rather yearned towards her countrymen, and
now, though she was preoccupied and a little disappointed at having been
detained, she tried to like Mr. Wendover, whom her sister had compared
invidiously, as it seemed to her, with her other companions. It struck
her that his surface at least was as glossy as theirs. The Baby, whom
she remembered to have heard spoken of as a dangerous flirt, was in
conversation with Lady Ringrose and the guardsman with Mrs. Berrington;
so she did her best to entertain the American visitor, as to whom any
one could easily see (she thought) that he had brought a letter of
introduction--he wished so to maintain the credit of those who had given
it to him. Laura scarcely knew these people, American friends of her
sister who had spent a period of festivity in London and gone back
across the sea before her own advent; but Mr. Wendover gave her all
possible information about them. He lingered upon them, returned to
them, corrected statements he had made at first, discoursed upon them
earnestly and exhaustively. He seemed to fear to leave them, lest he
should find nothing again so good, and he indulged in a parallel that
was almost elaborate between Miss Fanny and Miss Katie. Selina told her
sister afterwards that she had overheard him--that he talked of them as
if he had been a nursemaid; upon which Laura defended the young man even
to extravagance. She reminded her sister that people in London were
always saying Lady Mary and Lady Susan: why then shouldn't Americans use
the Christian name, with the humbler prefix with which they had to
content themselves? There had been a time when Mrs. Berrington had been
happy enough to be Miss Lina, even though she was the elder sister; and
the girl liked to think there were still old friends--friends of the
family, at home, for whom, even should she live to sixty years of
spinsterhood, she would never be anything but Miss Laura. This was as
good as Donna Anna or Donna Elvira: English people could never call
people as other people did, for fear of resembling the servants.

Mr. Wendover was very attentive, as well as communicative; however his
letter might be regarded in Grosvenor Place he evidently took it very
seriously himself; but his eyes wandered considerably, none the less, to
the other side of the room, and Laura felt that though he