or humor. He
did not care much for Clementina's past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray,
and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his
taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he
had known some of his order choose the mothers of their heirs from
the music halls, and when it came to a question of distinctions among
Americans, he could not feel them. They might be richer or poorer; but
they could not be more patrician or more plebeian.

The passengers, he told Clementina, were getting up, at this point
of the ship's run, an entertainment for the benefit of the seaman's
hospital in Liverpool, that well-known convention of ocean-travel, which
is sure at some time or other, to enlist all the talent on board every
English steamer in some sort of public appeal. He was not very clear how
he came to be on the committee for drumming up talent for the occasion;
his distinction seemed to have been conferred by a popular vote in the
smoking room, as nearly as he could make out; but here he was, and he
was counting upon Miss Claxon to help him out. He said Mrs. Milray had
told him about that charming affair they had got up in the mountains,
and he was sure they could have something of the kind again. "Perhaps
not a coaching party; that mightn't be so easy to manage at sea. But
isn't there something else--some tableaux or something? If we couldn't
have the months of the year we might have the points of the compass, and
you could take your choice."

He tried to get something out of the notion, but nothing came of it that
Mrs. Milray thought possible. She said, across her husband, on whose
further side she had sunk into a chair, that they must have something
very informal; everybody must do what they could, separately. "I know
you can do anything you like, Clementina. Can't you play something, or
sing?" At Clementina's look of utter denial, she added, desperately, "Or
dance something?" A light came into the girl's face at which she caught.
"I know you can dance something! Why, of course! Now, what is it?"

Clementina smiled at her vehemence. "Why, it's nothing. And I don't know
whether I should like to."

"Oh, yes," urged Lord Lioncourt. "Such a good cause, you know."

"What is it?" Mrs. Milray insisted. "Is it something you could do
alone?"

"It's just a dance that I learned at Woodlake. The teacha said that all
the young ladies we'e leaning it. It's a skut-dance--"

"The very thing!