but the subject was too near her heart to allow her
to be altogether silent. "I believe you know Mr. Glascock?" she said.

"Yes," said Wallachia, "I do know him." Now the peculiar nasal twang
which our cousins over the water have learned to use, and which
has grown out of a certain national instinct which coerces them to
express themselves with self-assertion;--let the reader go into his
closet and talk through his nose for awhile with steady attention
to the effect which his own voice will have, and he will find that
this theory is correct;--this intonation, which is so peculiar among
intelligent Americans, had been adopted con amore, and, as it were,
taken to her bosom by Miss Petrie. Her ears had taught themselves
to feel that there could be no vitality in speech without it, and
that all utterance unsustained by such tone was effeminate, vapid,
useless, unpersuasive, unmusical,--and English. It was a complaint
frequently made by her against her friends Caroline and Olivia that
they debased their voices, and taught themselves the puling British
mode of speech. "I do know the gentleman," said Wallachia;--and Lady
Rowley shuddered. Could it be that such a woman as this was to reign
over Monkhams, and become the future Lady Peterborough?

"He told me that he is acquainted with the family," said Lady Rowley.
"He is staying at our hotel, and my daughter knew him very well when
he was living in London."

"I dare say. I believe that in London the titled aristocrats do hang
pretty much together." It had never occurred to poor Lady Rowley,
since the day in which her husband had been made a knight, at the
advice of the Colonial Minister, in order that the inhabitants of
some island might be gratified by the opportunity of using the
title, that she and her children had thereby become aristocrats.
Were her daughter Nora to marry Mr. Glascock, Nora would become an
aristocrat,--or would, rather, be ennobled,--all which Lady Rowley
understood perfectly.

"I don't know that London society is very exclusive in that respect,"
said Lady Rowley.

"I guess you are pretty particular," said Miss Petrie, "and it seems
to me you don't have much regard to intellect or erudition,--but fix
things up straight according to birth and money."

"I hope we are not quite so bad as that," said Lady Rowley. "I do not
know London well myself, as I have passed my life in very distant
places."

"The distant places are, in my estimation, the best.