A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

A Novel of American Society

BY HAMILTON AÏDÉ

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1892

Copyright, 1892, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

TO
MY DEAR COMPANIONS
ON
A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
I Dedicate these Pages

CONTENTS

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

CHAPTER I

"Why are you going to the United States?" asked an American, no longer in his first youth, of a young Englishwoman, on board the Teutonic, the second day after they had left Liverpool.

The sky was blue; the sea was smooth; the hour was noon. The lady was stretched on a deck-chair; the American sat beside her. Both were fine types of their races; both had faces which arrested and held the attention. Mr. Quintin Ferrars was unusually tall for an American; his limbs were not loosely knit, and his walk was erect and firm—attributes more common to the dwellers in the prairie than to those on Fifth Avenue. He had a resolute, thoughtful face, over which gleams of satire were more apt to play than those of sympathy; with keen eyes, the expression, even the color, of which it was difficult to determine. Neither in his accent nor in his colloquialisms was there any touch of the peculiarity which we call "American," but which our cousins affirm to be drawn through conduits of heredity from the undefiled well of English speech of their Puritan fathers. Mr. Ferrars was accused of being an Anglomaniac; it would be more true to say that he was keenly critical of the defects in his own country. But then he was critical of all things, human and divine.

The young Englishwoman, in her tight-fitting Ulster of russet tweed, with a stalking-cap of the same material, beneath which her abundant auburn hair was tightly rolled, was tall, and had a well-balanced figure, with a waist sufficiently large to support her breadth of shoulder and finely developed bust without suggesting a fear that it might snap in two. Her clear gray eyes, under dark, level brows, had a singular directness of outlook; the fine lines of her somewhat large mouth as much variety of expression, when speaking, as of strength and sweetness in repose. But the chief characteristic of her handsome face was the eager interest it displayed in anything, whether grave or gay, that moved her; the absence of self-consciousness in her intercourse with both men and women; and the bright smile, which was in itself an enchantment. She had great animation of manner, a frank and ringing laugh, and a ready tongue; all of which were probably calculated to mislead a stranger as to her real character.

"Why are you going to the United States, Miss Ballinger?" again asked Mr. Ferrars.

"The polite answer would be that I am going to see your country; but that would not be quite true," answered the young lady, with a smile. "My brother wished me to come. I am doing so for the sake of being with him."

"You won't like it. Unless you go to the Far West, we have nothing to offer you that you haven't got better in Europe."

"People interest me more than things. One gets wrong ideas of Americans from those one often meets travelling. I shall like studying them on their own soil."

He lit a cigarette before he replied: "The best types you will probably not see. They do not push themselves prominently forward."

Miss Ballinger's eyes sparkled with amusement. "One would really think your object was to dissuade me from attempting to see your country."

"My object is to prevent your being disappointed. We are a very young, raw country. Youth, in the educational stage, is apt to offend against good taste. We are made up, at present, of odds and ends. You are sure to get hold of some odds. The ends require to be unravelled."

"I shall try and unravel them."

"Your brother is trying to do so now." He glanced down the row of deck-chairs to where Sir Mordaunt Ballinger sat on a stool beside the recumbent figure of a lady, so thickly veiled that it was impossible to see if she were young or old. "Have you made Mrs. Courtly's acquaintance? She is rather a complicated skein to unravel."

"We have exchanged a few words—just enough for me to know that she has a sweet voice and a very gracious manner."

"She is a charming woman, and a clever one. Not that she does anything or knows anything particularly well—at all events, much less than half our highly educated women. But she has that fine receptive capacity which makes her seize the scope and meaning of most things that do not demand preliminary study. Of course she is called 'superficial;' but what does that mean? That she has the artistic instinct unusually developed in a number of subjects, and an insatiable curiosity about everything."

"I had no idea she was that sort of person. I thought—I had been told that she was very fond of admiration—and—"

"I know all you heard. You need not tell me. She is often misunderstood; most of all, by her own sex. She is fond of dress, and dancing, and admiration. She is religious, and philosophical, and pictorial, and poetical—what is she not?—in turn. But she is never ill-natured, never slanderous. A female Proteus."

"You evidently know her well?"

"I do, but we have always met in Europe. I have never visited her in New England, where she has a charming house, and entertains a great deal."

"Has she been long a widow—for I conclude she is one?"

"Her husband died several years since, and she has never yet made up her mind to change her state. She had one desperate love-affair long ago. Whether it is that has prevented her marrying again, or whether her experience of matrimony was not such as to make her desire to repeat the experiment"—his smile was not pleasant as he said that—"I do not know. I only know she is the best friend in the world, and that women are jealous of her because she attracts all sorts and conditions of men. The lion and the lamb lie down together on her hearth-rug. But she loves the lion better than the lamb."

"Mordaunt is not a lion—neither is he quite a lamb," laughed his sister.

"Oh! but he will be made a lion of in the States. The son of so eminent a man as your father—whose name was so prominent in our country during the Alabama dispute, will be interviewed, and banqueted, and have receptions given for him, all the time. Most of this you will have to endure also. I hope you won't hate it as much as I should."

"I can't believe that you are right, Mr. Ferrars; but if greatness is thrust upon me in this unexpected manner, I hope I shall be amused. I have no idea of expecting to be bored with anything. A sense of humor carries one through so much; and I delight in American humor."

"If you expect that every one is going to talk like Mark Twain, you will be mistaken. You will find a good deal of unconscious humor occasionally in the sayings and doings of my countrymen. I hope it will carry you through those dreary hours, the ladies' luncheons, and all those terrible afflictions!"

"Must they be afflictions because you are not admitted to them?" laughed Miss Ballinger.

"Not necessarily. But the tall talk of superior women is bad enough when it has to bend to the level of our comprehension. What it must be when they are alone—"

"Well, they will have to bend to the level of mine. I shall collapse if they ask me, as Miss Lobb did this morning, 'what influence I considered the ancient religions of Egypt had on the manners and customs of the Western world?' I murmured, 'I suppose it has tended to a love of cats,' and fled."

Ferrars laughed, for the first time. "The old maid must have taken it as personal. I think, in some prior state of existence, she must have been a cat, though I doubt the Egyptians worshipping her."

"Her voice is very trying. Explain to me why your highly educated people who talk so much of 'culture' take so little trouble about training the voice? For the voice can be trained, you know."

"Certainly it can; and our singers prove that the American voice is a raw material that can be worked to advantage. But then singing pays, and speaking doesn't."

"Yet you are much given to 'orating!'" said Miss Ballinger, with a mischievous twitch of her lips. "Is not every American born to hold forth?"

"Well! As the Yankee said when he stood before Niagara for the first time, 'What hinders?' We are in the rapids of life. Why should the cataract of our impetuosity be checked? We have got to do a deal of talking to make leeway and overtake other nations."

"I think you have overtaken them. Are you a member of Congress?"

"Heaven forbid! What should I do there?"

"Serve your country, I suppose. You do not strike me as a good American, Mr. Ferrars."

"I am too good an American, and too irritable a man, to stand by and see all the jobbery and corruption that goes on, and not raise my voice. And what good would that do, even if I were elected, which I doubt? There are men shouting their lungs out all the time; there are papers, every day, denouncing the acts of a man like ——, and yet he will continue to be a member of our administration until he is hurled from power, and the opposition set up their gods in the temple. That is the result of our beautiful universal suffrage—what you are fast coming to."

"Are you a Democrat or a Republican?"

"Who can say what he is, in the present day? One feels disposed to vote with the opposition, whatever it is."

"Perhaps that is your principle through life," said Miss Ballinger, demurely, as she bound a Shetland veil round her face, which the wind was buffeting too roughly. After that he lost the sunlight, and the cloud-like shadows that crossed it. The next moment she continued, "You spoke of the papers just now. If they denounce corruption, they are not as bad as we are always told they are."

"Their denunciations lose all weight, because they vilify every one. The Angel Gabriel wouldn't be safe from their attacks. No man's home or his most private domestic concerns are sacred. No lie is too preposterous for them to invent; no scandal too hideous for them to propagate. As no man who brought an action for libel in the States ever got substantial redress, they carry on their vile trade with impunity—until some editor happens to be shot by an outraged husband, or father, when the community says, complacently, "Ah! served him right!" Can you wonder that the best citizens often shrink from the pillory of election for office, whether it be the municipal town council, or anything else? To have their early difficulties, their family griefs—it may be their family disgrace—their most secret wounds, torn open; to be pelted with the rotten eggs of vilification day after day—what man, unless he be made of adamant, or is sunk so low as to be absolutely indifferent to public opinion, would willingly subject himself to all this?"

"If a man had a very strong sense of public duty, and if his record were a clean one, I should think he would. How are things ever to be improved if all you educated men say this? By the bye, what do you do with your life, Mr. Ferrars? Something more than vibrate between Europe and America, I suppose?"

"Well, what I do can be done as well on one side of the Atlantic as the other. I was brought up to the study of medicine. But I gave that up when I was still young. Now I do nothing but write."

"Caustic criticism of your own country, I suppose? Anonymous?"

"Yes, anonymous."

"Perhaps you wrote 'Plutocracy,' the authorship of which excited so much curiosity, a few years ago?"

"I should not own it if I had," he replied, rather sharply. "I hold Sir Walter Scott's line of conduct quite justifiable in such cases. No secret could be kept if it was necessary to stand and deliver to the first highwayman who demanded your treasure."

"So you look on me as a highwayman?" laughed the young Englishwoman, merrily. "I assure you I had no desire to rob you of—"

"You misunderstand me," he interrupted, looking a little annoyed. "I did not think of applying the image—a stupid one, I admit—to you. As a matter of fact, I never write fiction. What I do write, for personal reasons, I do not put my name to; and, consequently, consider myself quite at liberty to repudiate."

The gong sounded for luncheon at this moment, and Sir Mordaunt rose and came up to his sister. He was a tall man, with rather too small a head for his height, but remarkably well built, and with that indefinable air of high breeding which is a gift of the gods, bestowed now and again upon the low-born, but not to be purchased nor transmitted; depending neither upon the traditions of Eton nor the tailoring of Poole or Johns. He had a frank, intelligent face, with indications of possible but transient explosion, in the quick flash of the eye, and occasional contraction of the brow. But he was more disposed to smile than to scowl through life. His laugh, and his way of speaking, strongly marked by what Americans call "the English accent," resembled his sister's; and there all likeness between them began and ended. Miss Ballinger's personality, to a close observer, conveyed a sense of reserved force under that light manner and readily responsive smile which her brother's entirely lacked. As some one expressed it, "all his goods were in his front shop-window." There was nothing to be explored, nothing to be connived at, in a nature affectionate, if not very profound; pleasure-loving, and, as some thought, conceited; quick-tempered, and, as some thought, occasionally impertinent; a nature every fold of which was exposed to the light that revealed its spots, and the accretions of dust that are apt to gather upon goods that are exposed in front shop-windows.

"Come along to luncheon, Grace! I'm as hungry as a hunter. How do you get on with that Yankee? I hope he was as entertaining as my widow. She is perfectly charming. I want you to talk to her. She knows almost as much as you do about pictures and things—and she is awfully amusing."

"I have been listening to her praises from Mr. Ferrars, who, by the bye, is not a Yankee. He is a Southerner by birth, and a cosmopolitan by choice—an odd man, and clever; but I don't feel quite sure whether I like him. All the same, I wish his seat at meals was next me. Mr. Gunning, with his narrow little mind centred on himself, is such a bore."

"Mrs. Courtly tells me he is 'a dude,' and tremendously rich. They think no end of him in New York."

"I dare say; but, as his riches don't interest me, I wish I hadn't to sit next him three times a day for the next week. I had so much rather have that nice old man, Senator something, who looks like a portrait by Tintoret, with his white beard."

"What a queer girl you are! always cottoning to old men. Gunning is a good-looking chap; talks a little too much about his yacht and his athletics, and his big game; but I don't think he's half a bad sort."

His sister smiled a subtle, enigmatical smile, and gently pinched her brother's arm, on which she leaned, as they walked along.

"How well I know you, Mordy! You wouldn't judge him so leniently if he were a penniless Englishman—'something in the city.' You are at present resolved to see everything American en beau."

"Of course I am. I only wish I had an American girl with some fun in her next me at table instead of that Lady Clydesdale."

"Well! She is American enough, in all conscience, with her republican ideas! She seems to me plus royaliste que le roi, if one can use such a conservative figure of speech about her."

"Only the fun's wanting. She is in such deadly earnest, with her rights and her wrongs, and her emancipation from social slavery, and all the rest of it."

They had reached the saloon by this time; and most of the famished passengers were already seated. Opposite Sir Mordaunt Ballinger and his sister sat a couple concerning whom Grace felt a mild curiosity. It had not been sufficiently strong to prompt her to speak hitherto; and they were so quiet and retiring, it was pretty certain they would never take the initiative. Were they husband and wife? Hardly. The lady looked a little older than her companion. She had a sweet, tranquil face; and yet, for all its tranquillity, one read there the lines of suffering and sorrow. Her abundant brown hair was smoothly parted over a brow that was too large for beauty, without fringe or curl, to mitigate the defect in proportion. Her dress was of Puritanic simplicity. She wore no bracelet, or ornament of any description; but on her delicate small hand was a wedding-ring.

Her companion, without being ill-built, had the sort of figure which looks as if he had never been trained to athletics, and is unused to active exercise. His hands and feet were almost too small for his height. His chest was contracted; and he had a cough which, without being constant, made itself heard now and again. His smile was a very pleasant one, lighting up the entire face, as some smiles seem incapable of doing; and his rare laugh was merry as a boy's. He wore his clothes badly, and the clothes themselves were ill-made: facts which disqualified him in Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's estimation, but hardly affected his sister. What did affect her was the curiously intense, powerful young face which rose, beardless, above the loose-tied neck-cloth. It was too thin and colorless for manly beauty, though the lines were fine, and the eyes of extraordinary depth. His voice, like his companion's, was low, and, except by certain expressions and the pronunciation of certain words, it would not have been apparent that he was American.

On the lady's right sat Mr. Ruggs, from Chicago, who had been to Europe to enlist sympathy for the World's Fair, and who held forth to Lady Clydesdale, opposite him, as to the wonders of the show, "which I tell you, ma'am, will knock the Paris Exhibition into a cocked hat!" His opulence and prodigality of illustration seemed a little oppressive to the gentlewoman beside him. Her companion had Miss Lobb on his left. That highly cultured lady tackled him at once upon the subject of undeveloped cosmic forces. Grace asked herself whether he would not be as glad to escape from the cosmic forces as she would be to forego the rapid vehemence of the young man from New York. And so, resolved that the stream of white cloth should divide her no longer from her opposite neighbors, she startled them with this original observation, addressed indifferently to both:

"How hungry being at sea makes one!"

The lady responded with a fluttering smile, "I have not experienced it as yet. I hope my son will do so soon. He has been sick."

Her son? Grace was astonished. And sick? Why, the twenty-four hours that had passed since leaving Liverpool had been absolutely calm. In her expressive countenance the young man read possibly what was passing in her mind.

"You would say 'ill,'" he observed, with a smile. "We use the word in the old Scriptural sense."

"Yes," said his mother, "'sick unto death.' He really was that. We have been quite a time in Europe, in consequence."

"Where were you?" asked Grace. "At some Baths?"

"Homburg is the only Bath worth going to," struck in Mr. Gunning. "Lots going on there, all the time."

"Horrid place. I hate it," said Miss Ballinger. Then, looking at her opposite neighbor, she continued, "I hope you were at a nice place. How long were you in Europe?"

"Four months. I was sent right off to Aix-la-Chapelle, after rheumatic fever, and then on to Spa. We had very little time to travel, but we did go around in Belgium and Holland for three weeks."

"One picks up awfully sweet delf and old oak in Holland," said Mr. Gunning.

"What! You saw nothing of England, then? And this is your first visit to Europe?" Miss Ballinger looked almost indignant as she asked this. The mother answered, quickly:

"It is our first visit, and I never should have come but for my son's health. I should dearly love to visit the cathedral towns, and all the old historical castles in England, but I guess I never shall."

"Yes you will," said her son. "I mean to go next fall, and to take you with me.... My mother has lived more than twenty-five years in a New England village, without going further than the sea-shore. She enjoys travel, but fancies she cannot leave home."

"When one has gotten a house, and help, it's difficult to go right away, even if there were no other reason," said the mother, shaking her head. "But you can go. There's no call for you to spend your vacation at home."

"If one doesn't go to Europe," said Gunning, "the only place is Newport. You must come to Newport, Miss Ballinger—you really must. It's yachting, dancing, or picnics all the time. You should see how our swells live there. Why, Cowes isn't in it—it isn't really. Our prominent cottagers give such entertainments! Why, there was one luncheon party last year that cost—"

"Don't tell me, Mr. Gunning. It makes me feel that I am a pauper."

Miss Lobb here interposed to observe that it was only in effete old countries that pauperism was tolerated. She looked through her double glasses defiantly at Grace as she added, "With us it is exterminated."

Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's face was convulsed with suppressed laughter, as he touched his sister's elbow at this moment. "Listen to Mr. Ruggs's account of Chicago. If it doesn't make you wish to go there! Will you tell my sister what you were saying about your city?"

"I tell you, miss," said the fat little man, turning a pair of twinkling eyes on Grace, and with an expression so shrewd and humorous that she felt uncertain how far he was in earnest, how far endeavoring to impose on her credulity—"I tell you, miss, we are going to have the finest city in the whole creation. Don't you make a mistake. There will be nothing to touch it, until the New Jerusalem is built. Why, already it takes more than two hours to drive from one end of it to the other! We've got a street twelve miles long. We've got a tonsorial saloon paved with dollar-pieces, and a hotel of alabaster and gold. I tell you, miss, there is nothing to touch it in Europe!"

"And about the World's Fair, Mr. Ruggs? tell us what you propose doing?" asked Sir Mordaunt.

"Well, sir, we propose bringing over a few of your European princes, and having them on show. We are in treaty for the Duke of Braganza, as direct descendant of Columbus, whose bones we feel like having—if we can—but, odd to say, they make some difficulties. The bones and the descendants will come right over in galleons made on the model of those that brought Columbus. We also propose to bring over the Sphinx—"

"What! From Egypt?" Miss Ballinger laughed outright. "Poor Sphinx! It will feel very strange away from its native desert."

"Oh, we'll blow a lot of sand up right around it. We've got plenty on the shore of our lake. That's for the classical advertisement. Then for the Scriptural one. I did think of having Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and dividing the water by hydraulic pressure; but making the waves red might create a sort of a—feeling—the citizens might feel kinder uncomfortable. There's no reason against the Garden of Eden—plenty of apple-trees, and snakes are common—there's only a little difficulty about Adam and Eve. However, I've no doubt we shall hit on something. People do like something Scriptural. There's Ammergau, now! That would do fust-rate, only those peasants wouldn't come."

"But you're going to have a bigger theatre than the world has ever seen, I suppose?"

"We have one, sir. And as to acting, have you seen our Clara Morris? I tell you, sir, there is nothing in creation like it! Why, when she weeps on the stage, it is enough to make an iron dog come down from a door-step and lick her hand! Don't talk to me of your Bernhardts and your Ristor-eyes—not but what we'll have them, too, just to show how superior the reel American article is!"

"And pictures? Are you going in for pictures?"

"I believe you, sir! Why, the pictures at the Paris Exhibition'll be like a pack of playing-cards compared with ours. I calculate we'll have the biggest picture on show that has ever been seen. It's forty-two feet long. I've concluded to bid half-price for it when our show is over, and to present it to the city."

Here Lady Clydesdale, who was on the other side of Sir Mordaunt, struck in her oar, and a powerful one it was. She was what Mr. Ruggs styled "a fine female, but fleshy," and her arrogant assumption of humility was irritating to others besides the young baronet; perhaps to none more than to Americans.

"I am sorry to hear you say," she observed, quickly, and in a voice like a trumpet, "that you are going to imitate the follies of Europe, in attaching any importance or giving any prominence to princes. It is degrading to distinguish one individual above another, except for personal merit."

"Yours and mine are beyond question, Lady Clydesdale," laughed Ballinger, parenthetically. It was impertinent; but he was nettled. She turned and rent him.

"My principles and practice are too well known at home for me to argue with you, Sir Mordaunt. I would resign my coronet to-morrow. I would abolish all class distinctions. I would herd with the humblest, I would dine with my servants, and give them all the luxuries I enjoy myself—the piano, horses, carriages—they should live as I do, did the prejudice of society permit it. I expected to find it more enlightened in America than in England. I thought there was one country, at least, where all men were equal! I am disappointed."

What Mr. Ruggs's rejoinder was, for he did rejoin, and how the battle was fought, Miss Ballinger never heard; for Gunning, who had been listening to her ladyship's onslaught in amazement, here said in an undertone:

"Is she mad? Fancied we were all equal! Why, we are just as exclusive as ever we can be in New York. The Four Hundred shut their doors against every one who hasn't money, I can tell you."

"Ah! Brains count for nothing, I suppose?"

"Nothing out of Wall Street. A man must work, of course, to make his pile—if he doesn't inherit one. I was an only child. Lucky, wasn't I? Never had to work."

"Those who have to work are the lucky ones, in my opinion."

He looked surprised, and shook his head.

"Couldn't have my yacht or my team—couldn't go off to shoot in the Rockies—couldn't do lots of things, if I had to work. Then, getting up early every morning.... Oh! it wouldn't suit me." After a minute's pause he went on: "You'll let me drive you in my team, one day? I'll get up a luncheon-party for you somewhere in the country. We'll have a band, and dance afterwards. We'll have a rare, good time."

"I shall do whatever my brother likes in New York. You must ask him. I shall have absolutely no will of my own. Will you give me those biscuits?... Thank you."

"We call them crackers. About your brother, I'll see that we have a lot of bright girls. There's Miss Planter. She is a belle; she will just suit him. She was made a lot of in London last season, I believe. She will have a million of dollars. Not bad, eh?"

"Bad, if she is to be married for the sake of them. It is fortunate she is attractive. I am glad that I have only enough to keep body and soul alive. No one will marry me for my money!"

"Oh, well, it won't signify to you, having nothing—" He stopped short and smiled at her. Then, though the connection of ideas was not very clear, he went on: "I say, Miss Ballinger, this is the second time I have been to Europe, but I've never seen anything of English society. I have fooled around in Paris and London a bit, but I have a mind next year to take a place in England, and hunt. Do you think I should like it? They say English women don't take to American men. Is that so?"

"We know so few. Most of you are too absorbed in business to spend much time with us. But your women are very popular. My brother says they are so much easier to get on with than his own countrywomen."

"That's right enough. But are not we American men easy to get on with, as well?"

"Certainly—perhaps too easy, sometimes. But, having got on, the thing is to remain on. I have heard it complained sometimes that Americans lose ground by assurance. If you come to England, I dare say you will be made a great deal of, because you are a rich young man. But if you want to be popular with any one besides manœuvring mammas, take my advice—never talk about your money, never presume upon it, in any way. The nicest people resent that.... I am going on deck; it is so hot here."

She delivered herself of this little homily simply, almost laughingly, and rose, leaving the young man to his half-finished luncheon. The mother opposite, without waiting for her son, upon whom Miss Lobb had once again fastened her fangs, had risen from the table, and Miss Ballinger followed and joined her on deck.

CHAPTER II

"May I walk up and down with you?"

The gentle little woman smiled her assent.

"I was never more surprised than to hear you were the mother of the young man opposite me—you look like his eldest sister."

"I was married very young."

"Is he your only child?"

"The only one alive. I lost two younger. That is why I—why we are doubly anxious about him."

"Your husband is alive, then? What is he?"

It was only this young woman's great charm of manner which prevented her curiosity sometimes from seeming obtrusive. But there was such genuine interest in the look of her clear, truthful eyes that no one, least of all the gentle, unsophisticated creature she addressed, could resent it.

"My husband is a minister; our name is Barham. We live in a very quiet village in New England, and seldom leave it. Of course, I should not have gone abroad with Saul, had it not been for his health. But my husband urged it, and so I went."

"And you are glad you went, I am sure. As you were anxious about your son, it must have been a great comfort to you to be with him. Has he always been delicate?"

"Well, he has never been very strong." Here she sighed. "We feared lung trouble at one time. Our climate is rather trying, and Saul overworked himself."

"Was he at Harvard University? I am sure he is very clever."

"Yes, he is very clever. When he left Harvard he became a teacher. Then they made him a professor at the university a few months ago—a great compliment to so young a man. But whether his health will stand it—" Here she sighed again, and left her sentence unfinished.

"But he is going now to return to his work?"

"Why, certainly! He would not give that up for the world. He was offered a fine salary to remain in Europe and travel with two boys. It would have been a grand thing for his health, and he would have made more money than he can do at home, but he would not accept it. He has a deal of ambition, you see; and there's—there's something else. He is so fond of me, he couldn't bear to leave me, and go right away. Here he comes; don't say anything to him about his health, Miss—"

"Miss Ballinger. No, I will not. I am so much obliged to you for telling me so much about yourselves.... Mr. Barham, I am going to introduce myself formally to you. Your mother and I have been making friends. It is like being at a masquerade not knowing who and what people are; and it saves so much idle speculation and back-stair ferreting-out to label one's self at once. I am Miss Ballinger, spinster, aged twenty-five, travelling with her brother, Sir Mordaunt Ballinger, Baronet and member of Parliament. Any discreet question you like to ask I am prepared to answer; for I have a mania for asking questions myself, as your mother knows by this time; and I don't want any unfair advantage."

The young man looked at her fixedly for a moment, and then laughed. He had never met any one like this young lady. Was she a specimen of her country? He knew so few of them.

"All the questions I shall ask will be mental ones, which you will answer, whether you like it or not," he said. "I find those replies, unconsciously given, so much more satisfying than any others. Little mother, you look tired; lie down here. Perhaps Miss Ballinger will continue her quarter-deck walk with me."

He tucked up the "little mother" on a deck-chair, with a plaid round her legs; then turned, and resumed his walk with Miss Ballinger. She began at once:

"What a charming face Mrs. Barham has! She reminds me of Scheffer's picture of the mother of St. Augustine—only younger."

"Yes. It is a pity I am not more like him. The only point of resemblance that I can recall is, that whenever I pray to be made good, I add, like Augustine—'but not to-day, O Lord!'"

She turned her bright, penetrating glance full upon him, half laughing, half serious.

"Are you one of the men who are anxious to be thought very wicked? I should not have expected that. But there I am, questioning again! Well, never mind. Strong characters are rarely saints in youth, I suppose; though I don't know why they shouldn't be, if they are only strong enough."

"Perhaps I am not strong at all."

"Yes, you are. Your mouth and chin told me that, before you spoke."

"You are a physiognomist. How about the eyes? Do you attach any importance to them?—those 'windows of the soul?'"

"He does not expect me to say that his windows are luminous ones, magnificently draped, does he? If he does, he shall be disappointed," thought Grace. What she said was:

"Eyes are the most deceptive feature—there is no trusting them. I have grown quite tired of fine eyes."

The young American smiled in a peculiar manner. "I am beginning my mental questions."

"What do you mean?"

"I am wondering whether you yourself are always perfectly truthful."

She flushed, and looked annoyed. "You are quite justified. Of course, I was not speaking the exact truth—though it is really my opinion that eyes do not denote character."

"I think your eyes do—better than your words, perhaps."

"As how?"

He smiled again. "Well, that brings the confession that I was not perfectly truthful. I was not wondering—I never doubted that you were truthful and straightforward generally; though you might say things that were not quite so, some times."

She burst out laughing.

"Upon my word, Mr. Barham! That is a pretty character, and, unfortunately, it is quite true. It is lucky I am not like Mrs. Van Winkle—have you spoken to Mrs. Van Winkle? she is most amusing—who told me she loved flattery, in every form; there was no amount of it she could not swallow! Now, I like it, of course—what woman doesn't! But it must be in homœopathic doses. You have administered an infinitesimal grain of it wrapped up in a very wholesome bitter. I shall take care what I say to you in future."

"Pray, don't. That would be punishing my impertinence too severely. Yes, Mrs. Van Winkle spoke to me this morning, hearing I was from Harvard. She said she felt that those who were fellow-workers in one field should interchange thoughts. I suppose I stared, for she hastened to inform me that she had written a book which was pronounced to be a work of genius."

"Her naïveté is quite delightful!"

"Presently she went on to tell me that a painter had begged her to sit to him as Clio, when she was in Rome, and that her hands and feet had been modelled by a sculptor in Paris. I suppose that was naïve."

"Certainly it was. Most of us would have gone a roundabout way to convey the same information. We are all vain. My vanity is fed by the belief that people will find out what a nice person I am, without my giving a sort of auctioneer's inventory of my merits, as that dear innocent Mrs. Van Winkle does."

"Innocent? Well!... She told me her husband would be the next minister to England, and that she would not return there till then, as she did not choose to go about, having to explain herself. I thought—with the Paris sculptor and the modelling—that a foot-note might be explanation enough. But I have not an idea what she meant."

"She meant that the Van Winkles are not to be herded with common travelling Americans."

"I have been a common travelling American myself for the last three months."

"And I dare say you had sometimes to explain yourself."

"Never. I know too well the way in which my pushing countrymen are spoken of, to seek any one. Those who have sought me have had to do so without any 'explanation.'"

"Proud as Lucifer," thought Grace. "Clearly not the stuff of which saints are made." Then aloud, "How did you like Europe?"

"Very much, for a time—for many times, I might say. I should like to travel there yearly. I hope it may be possible for me to do so. But I would not live out of my own country."

"Because you prefer it as a residence—or from a sense of duty?"

He demurred. "The associations of early life have a strong hold on one, and there are special reasons in my case why—" Here he broke off; then began anew: "Of course, there are things I dislike, things I deplore, in my own country; but she has a great future before her, and it behooves every American to do his best to advance that future; so that the generation that follows may be richer than the present, in wisdom and in worth."

"Not only in wealth?"

"You have been told that is the only god we worship? Well, that is true, perhaps, of the majority—not of all. And this god, when he has been won by the self-made man, is generally a very munificent god with us. Where will you find colleges, hospitals, libraries, galleries, the gift of private individuals, to the same extent as with us? Every city has its record of them—a record to be proud of."

"I see I shall have to strike a balance in my judgment between you and Mr. Ferrars. He is pessimist, and you are optimist, as regards your country."

"I do not know Mr. Ferrars," said the young man, dryly. "But it is a cheap way of showing your superiority, to decry your own nation and point out all its shortcomings."

"There is such a thing as exaggerated patriotism that will not admit shortcomings. As a nation, you are so over-sensitive to criticism. Why, you will not allow one of your own best writers to represent certain types, to laugh at certain follies, without crying out that he is unpatriotic! The whole stock in trade of Dickens and Thackeray was laughing at our shams and vulgarities, and who ever thought of bringing such a charge against them?"

"We are over-sensitive, but then we are very young, remember."

Here a slight accident interrupted their progress. Mrs. Courtly was emerging from the main gangway just as Miss Ballinger and her companion crossed it, and a lurch of the vessel, for the wind had been gradually rising and the sea was no longer perfectly smooth, sent the unprepared lady, adroit and nimble as she was, into the young man's arms. She was a small, slight woman, exquisitely built and proportioned, no longer in her first youth, with a pale face lit by a wonderful smile, which recalled to Grace Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatical "Joconde."

Apologies on both sides, with a good deal of laughing on the lady's part, followed. Grace came forward, and a few words were exchanged, during which Barham took off his hat and walked away, to Miss Ballinger's surprise—perhaps, it may be said, to her annoyance.

"Who is your friend whom I so unceremoniously embraced?" asked Mrs. Courtly, in her low, musical voice. "Why is he gone away? I am so sorry to have interrupted your walk."

"If he had wished, I suppose, he would have stayed. He is a professor from Harvard University; his name is Barham."

"Really? I never heard of him, and I have so many friends at Harvard. My home in Massachusetts is not so very far distant. He is very good-looking; is he clever?"

"Certainly; but not much of a society man. He suffers from a form of shyness which I suppose is not common in the States—a dread of being thought forward, pushing. I am sure that is why he beat a retreat."

"How very singular! It was I who was forward and pushing!" Here she laughed softly. "You must present him formally to me; I shall be delighted to make his acquaintance; I love to gather round me all that is best worth knowing. By the way, your brother has been promising to bring you to stay with me. I am within easy reach of Boston. I hope you won't object."

"You are very good; it sounds delightful. I have always looked forward to seeing Boston, and I hope my brother will go there. I have heard there is nothing like Boston society."

"You must not expect the magnificence of New York. We New-Englanders live much more simply; but there is a pleasant mixture of the grave and the gay. I am reproached with being too gay—too frivolous for my years. But my principle is to enjoy everything as long as I can, to live and to let live. And so I get a great deal of pleasure out of existence."

She said this in a low, cooing voice that was wonderfully persuasive.

"And confer a great deal," rejoined Grace. "Most people get so soon blasés, it is refreshing to find any one who retains youthfulness of spirit into middle age. But, then, you have a wonderful variety of interests in life, I am told."

"Oh, yes; I care for a great many things, I am glad to say—books, and pictures, and people. If I cannot get some excitement out of one, I do out of another; life is so curious, so full of problems. Who told you about me? If you listen to all you hear—"

"It was Mr. Ferrars—evidently a very true friend—who spoke of you."

"Oh! poor Quintin Ferrars! Yes, he is a good friend."

"Why do you say 'poor'?"

"Because he has not had a happy life."

"Partly his own fault, I should think. He strikes me as not having a happy temperament."

"Is that his own fault?" asked Mrs. Courtly, smiling. "He has not a happy temperament, it is true. I have always told him that he does not extract the enjoyment he might out of life—though it struck me he was doing so successfully this morning! But, poor fellow! he has been heavily handicapped; circumstances have been against him, they have embittered everything."

Grace was dying to ask what those circumstances were, but something restrained her. Her acquaintance with Mrs. Courtly was but slight; it would hardly be seemly for Grace to press for information about Mrs. Courtly's friend which that lady thought fit to conceal. Presently Mrs. Courtly said,

"Will you come and have tea in my cabin at five o'clock? I have a deck cabin; it can hold half a dozen people—Mrs. Van Winkle, and your brother, and Quintin Ferrars, and one other man; shall I ask Jem Gunning?"

"Not for me, please; I have enough of him at three meals every day. Do you like him?"

"Why, yes. Jem is not a bad boy in his way. A clever woman would twist Jem round her finger, and might make him very different to what he is."

"What he is, is not pleasing to me at present. Perhaps if I meet him hereafter, when he has been duly twisted by the clever woman, I may appreciate him more."

"How sarcastic you are!" purred Mrs. Courtly, showing her white teeth; "all our young men will be quite afraid of you, Miss Ballinger."

"I am not sarcastic—far from it," said Grace, laughing. "Only I know what I like and what I don't."

"You prefer your friend, the Harvard professor?" She smiled with a malicious twinkle in her hazel eyes. "Well, will you invite him? Bring him with you."

Grace was a little taken aback. "I—I can't bring him. I will deliver your message ... if I see him.... But he is no friend of mine. I never spoke to him till half an hour ago."

After a few more words interchanged, the two ladies separated. Later in the afternoon, Grace found Mr. Barham, seated by his mother, reading, in the upper deck cabin. It had by this time become rough and cold, and only the very hardy were still pacing the deck.

"I have a message from Mrs. Courtly (the lady who would have fallen but for you to-day). She wishes to make your acquaintance, Mr. Barham, and asks if you will come and have tea in her cabin at five o'clock. My brother and I are going."

The young man had laid down his book, and had risen. He looked much surprised.

"What can Mrs. Courtly want to know me for? I am not a society man, and I cannot do anything to amuse her.... But ... of course ... if ... you are quite sure—"

"I should not transmit such a message if I were not quite sure. You will do as you please about accepting the invitation." Then, turning abruptly to Mrs. Barham, "Can you recommend to me a thoroughly representative American book—I mean representative of real American life, not from the satirical or humorist point of view? I see there is a capital library here."

"Our New England life is very well depicted in Mary Wilkins's tales, and also in Sarah Orne Jewett's. They are truthful pictures of our quiet homes, our quiet lives, removed from the turmoil of the great cities. But perhaps you might find them dull."

"I have read them, and thought them charming. Spinsterhood is great, and Miss Wilkins is its prophet. But I want to know about something besides those dear old women. Miss Jewett, also, charming as she is, is circumscribed. I want something wider in range. I was given 'On Both Sides' the other day. It amused me, but as a caricature."

"You mean that the English are caricatured—not the American," said Saul Barham, with a smile.

"Yes, I do. No woman in society ever said the outrageously vulgar things Mrs. Sykes is made to say. She may think them—she may even act them—she could not say them. It strikes a false note. Then there is a beautiful young man, supposed to be a typical young man of society, who tells a long story in which he repeats over and over again, 'I says to him.' Why! no one above a stable-boy ever used such a form of speech."

"Is it quite possible for one nation to judge another fairly?" asked Mrs. Barham, gently.

"I hope so. Why not? I am sure I have no anti-American prejudices. But as we are so closely bound together by language and origin, it is more difficult for us not to look at differences between us from an English standpoint, than it is when we are discussing any European nation. And no doubt it is the same with you, if you confess it."

"I do confess it," said the young man.

Mrs. Barham murmured something about there being "quite a number of persons in America who imitate everything English now."

Saul laughed.

"Why, we have a cousin who is so anxious to be taken for an Englishman that we can scarcely understand what he says, he swallows his words so."

After which he recommended two books to Grace, one of which she found on the shelves disengaged, and departed with it.

CHAPTER III

The small gathering in Mrs. Courtly's cabin at five o'clock, which looked at first as if it would be what Mordaunt Ballinger called "frosty," ended, by reason of the hostess's tact and charm of manner, in assimilating fairly well. The men were of course the difficult ingredients to "mix;" they always are when not homogeneous. Ballinger felt, and rightly, that he and Ferrars had not much in common; it would require a shipwreck to make them intimate. Ferrars probably did not trouble his head about the young baronet, except as being the brother of the most delightful girl he thought he had ever met. Saul Barham was an unknown quantity to both men. To Ballinger he was "a young Yankee, not bad-looking, but a willowy sort of chap, got up in a reach-me-down, and wants his hair cut awfully." Ferrars regarded his young countryman superciliously, as he did most things at first. And the young Harvard professor showed no keen desire to conciliate either of the men whom he now spoke to for the first time. Mrs. Van Winkle displayed an evident intention of securing Sir Mordaunt Ballinger's undivided attention, by inviting him to share a portmanteau with her, the seats in the cabin being few. But it was not to indulge in têtes-à-têtes that Mrs. Courtly had brought her friends together; they could do that on deck. With the pouring out of the Russian tea, and the diffusion of some wonderful cakes, produced from a tin, she contrived adroitly to break up the duets, for Ferrars was talking art in a low voice to Miss Ballinger, and she herself had been drawing out the young professor. She felt that the conversation ought now to become general.

"You must come and see me when you are back in Cambridge," she had been saying to Barham, as she made tea. "I am quite an easy distance by rail from there, and I want you to look over my books. I am devoted to books ... not that I am a great scholar—far from it. Do you read Italian? Yes! I am so glad. Then, with your knowledge of Latin, you will help me to decipher some old provincial poems which I picked up at Quaritch's the other day, and of which I believe there are very few copies extant. I have some Elzevirs, too, that may interest you, and several first editions. Talking of first editions, dear Mrs. Van Winkle, is it true that the whole of the first edition of your 'Phryne' is sold out? Have you read it, Sir Mordaunt? Of course you have, Quintin!"

The men were spared replying by the fair authoress, a decorative woman, with lively eyes and a very elaborate pink tea-gown.

"The demand for my book has been very great," she said, with a sweet smile, "but I know nothing of the details. I have had applications from all the chief magazines begging me to write for them, and I suppose I must do so. Of course my name has something to do with the success. People know that, as a leader of society, I write of what I understand."

"Then I conclude your book is modern, and has nothing to do with the famous Greek ... beauty?" inquired Ferrars, gravely.

"Only by analogy," replied Mrs. Van Winkle, sipping her tea slowly. "The whole world sits in judgment now upon any woman whose beauty or whose talent makes her conspicuous. If she has a symmetrical form she is always accused of being too decolletée."

"You forget that the judges forgave Phryne."

"Oh! they were men. Of course it isn't men's tongues a woman has to fear in society. They will make love to her, and praise her before and behind her back, if she amuses them—and encourages them just a little. It is the wives and the mothers, they are the Areopagus which sits in judgment upon the woman who attracts men."

"You must have suffered severely at their hands," said Sir Mordaunt, as he looked up into her face with an amused expression.

"I don't know about suffered. We are all arraigned, we married women, who amuse ourselves, and who have inspired perhaps a grande passion—is it not true, Mrs. Courtly? But they are a little afraid of me. When a gifted woman has social position and fortune she is comparatively safe. She may follow her own course, and is only accused of the eccentricities of genius—or, at worst, of being a little mad. I know," she added, complacently, as she bit a cake with her small white teeth, "that is what they say of me."

Mrs. Courtly felt rather uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken. She was not quite sure how far Miss Ballinger might be amused or scared by Mrs. Van Winkle's utterances. It was necessary to make a diversion before one of the men should throw back the ball; so she said, quickly,

"Isn't it Marcus Aurelius—or somebody—who says, 'It is a good thing to be abused'? And, as you say, your position is so well established! You will look after Miss Ballinger and her brother in New York, I know, and see that they get invitations to anything that is going on. How long do you remain there, Miss Ballinger?"

"You must ask my brother. He has some business in New York. The length of our stay depends entirely on him."

"I shall do all that lies in my power to make it agreeable to you," said Mrs. Van Winkle, with cordiality. Her glance, which was at first directed to Grace, revolved slowly, till it rested on Sir Mordaunt.

"I am glad to hear you have business," said Ferrars, addressing the latter directly for the first time. "With an object—a direct interest—your visit to the United States may repay you. I was telling Miss Ballinger that if she expected either picturesque beauty or art, she would be disappointed, but she declares, like Pope, that 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and she comes among us, wishing to see something of our society. You will show her the most costly samples of our social fabrics, Mrs. Van Winkle, but how about brains? You who are such a decorative ornament of literature, I hope you will get together some clever people for Miss Ballinger."

"Oh! brains are of no account in our New York society. I might pick up a brain or two, if I were to sweep around very diligently, perhaps, but the world I live in is intensely frivolous, and whenever I meet a clever man I feel like putting him under a glass case, he's too good for daily use. Miss Ballinger will have to get Mr. Barham to show her the brains of society at Cambridge."

Here she smiled sweetly at the young man; and he spoke for the first time, laughing lightly, as he said,

"I am afraid we are all in glass cases there, classified and catalogued. But, without putting Mrs. Van Winkle to the labor of searching for brains in New York, I am sure if Miss Ballinger meets some of our brilliant lawyers and noted speakers she will find there is as good talk to be listened to there as anywhere in Europe. I hope she will not judge of American society from any one set, or any single specimen."

"Quite right, Mr. Barham," said Mrs. Courtly, with a kindly nod. "Though hardly complimentary to us, I think you are quite right. No Frenchman would have said that; but you are too much in earnest to think of our feelings—Mrs. Van Winkle's and mine."

Miss Ballinger came to his defence. "It is really more complimentary to think you both incapable of personally applying Mr. Barham's remark than if he had fenced it round with those leafless twigs of conventional politeness which only draw attention to what they were meant to conceal."

"The leaves, themselves, did that in Paradise," murmured Mrs. Van Winkle, leaning back with a dreamy air.

Ballinger was the only one who laughed. Mrs. Courtly coughed, and did not seem quite at ease. Ferrars said quickly,

"Mr. Barham is quite right. Nothing is so misleading as personal experience in forming our estimate of a nation. My friend goes to England, and lives in his hotel all the time (and very bad hotels they often are, it must be owned), I have the good chance to meet a few people I know, and am received with kindness and hospitality. What are our respective opinions worth? Never generalize from individuals. Out of us four Americans who are round this table, only Mr. Barham, perhaps, is the least a typical product of our country."

"Why so?" asked Miss Ballinger.

"Because I see he has great belief in our institutions, our future, our indomitable force. As to me, I gave up any such belief when I was twenty. You said yesterday you doubted if I was a good American. If to believe that our crooked paths are straight, our rough ways smooth, and to proclaim on the housetops that we are the greatest nation on earth—if this is to be a good American, then I am not one."

"I never heard that to love one's country was to be blind to her faults," said Barham, quickly.

"Mr. Ferrars belongs to no country," Mrs. Van Winkle fanned herself as she spoke, with half-closed eyes. "Nor do I. I am more like a Russian, I believe—a Russian George Sand—that is what I feel like. And you, dear Mrs. Courtly? Are you not more French? Madame Récamier, with any number of Chateaubriands round you, it suits you to a T."

"Are Chateaubriands so plentiful?" laughed Mrs. Courtly, gently. "I wish I could find them! They would last so long, too. Madame Récamier's friendships did not depend upon her youth. I should like to end my days lying on a sofa, and surrounded by my old friends."

"Nothing reconciles one so much to the trouble of living as those strong links which stand the test of time," said Ferrars, looking with steady, level eyes at Mrs. Courtly.

"Ah! Quintin, yours is one of those iron natures whose links never melt—not very malleable, but which will stand any amount of strain, as I know."

"Never melts?" exclaimed Mrs. Van Winkle, opening her pretty blue eyes in affected wonder. "I prefer a man who melts."

"And whose links are of gold?" said Ferrars, without looking at her. Then he went on, while a flush mounted to her cheek, "I am not one of the precious metals."

"There is a great deal of brass," replied the lady, more tartly than she had yet spoken. "Give me another cup of tea, dear, with lots of sugar; I want something sweet after Mr. Ferrars's acidity. So you are going to the far West, your brother tells me, Miss Ballinger? What a journey!"

"And yet you think nothing of running backwards and forwards to Europe?" laughed Grace.

"Oh! traversing our own continent is different; not half such a change, and very trying to the complexion. Even in the East one gets awfully dried up. Then, there is nothing to see when one gets there."

"It is not only prophets who have no honor in their own country!" cried Sir Mordaunt. "Fancy, my sister has never seen the Tower of London! And it is the more shameful, as I was there for a year."

"Not imprisoned?" inquired Mrs. Van Winkle, with mock gravity.

"The next thing to it—I was quartered there."

"Then you are a guardsman? I always wondered whether all guardsmen were like Guy Livingstone. Now I know."

"Well, you see in me a deceased guardsman. I left the service a few months ago."

"Do tell me what brings you out to America. An heiress? Of course, you have been very wicked. Are you going to 'ranger' yourself?"

"Neither reformation nor matrimony is in my mind, I am afraid," laughed Ballinger. "Only self-interest and curiosity. I have one or two friends—one, a brother-officer—settled on a ranch in Colorado. I am going to look about and see if I can find a good investment for a little money."

"I think it will be so refreshing to see ranch-life, after the conventionalities of civilization," said Grace.

"You will find a week of it will go a long way," and Mrs. Courtly shook her head. To her, existence without its intellectual refinements and pictorial luxuries—all the delicate and varied entrées she provided for herself in the pleasant feast which she called "life"—without these, existence would hardly be worth having.

"I would rather live on a ranch than work in Wall Street all my days," said Barham.

"Wall Street has solid compensations," observed Ferrars.

"I think money can be too dearly bought," returned the younger man, quickly. "At the sacrifice of all independence, I would not be rich, if I could."

"How sweet of you, Mr. Barham! In these mercenary days to hear such a sentiment from a man—it is quite too lovely for anything!"

Mrs. Van Winkle spoke the words with a languid drawl, but there was a humorous twinkle in her eye. In point of fact, it was often difficult to tell how far she meant her utterances to be taken seriously. Grace, in the spirit of anti-humbug, struck in gayly,

"I am a Philistine. I like riches. I should like to know once how it feels to be very rich. I think I could work in Wall Street—whatever that may mean—all my life, if I could earn lots of money; but I never shall."

Barham looked at her, with a steady gaze. Was she in earnest?

"I heard the worship of wealth was as great in London as in New York—but I did not believe it."

"Well," said Mordaunt, "all I can say is, I know several instances in the Life Guards where a fellow's having a pot of money prejudiced other fellows against him. They sent him to Coventry because his father dropped his h's, and they made up their minds the son couldn't be a gentleman. I know one very nice chap who couldn't stand it—had to leave. So you see the worship of money isn't universal."

"We don't drop our h's," Ferrars said. "But there are few colloquial sins we may not commit with impunity if we have half a million of dollars a year, and entertain."

"Ah! You have it there!" interposed Mrs. Van Winkle. "Our rich people are bound to entertain. Otherwise they are of no account. It is very logical. We, of the blue blood, want amusements, but are too poor to give magnificent fêtes. We honor them with our presence, and the obligation is more than repaid."

"I honor the sentiment. It is worthy of blue blood, and it carries conviction with it."

"Mr. Ferrars is detestably satirical, but no one minds what he says," and the lady rose. "It is nearly dinner-time. We must leave you, my dear." And so the party broke up.

Next day Mrs. Courtly found an opportunity of saying to Miss Ballinger, in her soft, deprecatory way,

"I am afraid you may form a false impression of Mrs. Van Winkle. She is really a very kind woman, as well as a clever one, and she is a very good wife, too, only you see her failing. She likes to astonish people. That makes her say things occasionally which—which she had better not."

Grace smiled. "I suppose she has been spoiled—she gives one that idea. Did she marry for money?"

"Why, no! What made you think that?"

"She looked so annoyed when Mr. Ferrars talked of 'links of gold.' I am sure he meant something disagreeable by it. He looked it."

"Mr. Van Winkle is by no means rich, but she married him because she was in love; and they are really very happy. He is of a very good old Knickerbocker family. She is very proud of that, as you see. She has always a train of admirers; it means nothing, and Mr. Van Winkle does not object. That is to say, he doesn't generally. It is said he did so once, in the case of a man who was very rich, when some one ill-naturedly started the idea that this person helped the establishment along. It got to Mr. Van Winkle's ears, and he gave the man his congé there and then. It is the only time he ever asserted his authority, and I am not sure that his wife did not like him all the better for it. If Quintin Ferrars meant anything by his 'golden links,' it was that; but I really think it was a chance shot, and Mrs. Van Winkle—"

"What about her?" said Sir Mordaunt. He had come up, unperceived by Mrs. Courtly; and she stopped short on seeing him. "I think that woman is the greatest sport I've met for a week of Sundays! How she does blow her own trumpet! I never can be dull in New York as long as she is there. What sort of fellow is the male Winkle, Mrs. Courtly?"

"A very nice man, but he doesn't amount to much. He is a Van. You mustn't call him Winkle—tout court."

"A descendant of the famous Rip, I suppose. We have all had rips for ancestors, at some time or other, no doubt!" and the young man laughed.

"For shame! to decry your pedigree in that way! We are very proud of our descent—when we have any; and if we know who our great-grandfather was, we always speak of him as having fought in the War of Independence."

The brother and sister laughed; and the subject of the Van Winkles was not continued further.

CHAPTER IV

The rest of the voyage was performed swiftly and uneventfully. Mordaunt Ballinger walked the quarter-deck for hours with certain American men, whom he encouraged to talk of their various interests and enterprises, and believed he was gaining a vast store of useful information thereby. The acquaintances brought together in Mrs. Courtly's cabin saw more or less of each other, according to their proclivities; and in some cases intimacies were formed which could hardly die the natural death which is the common lot of close companionship on board ship. This was especially so in the friendship which Miss Ballinger had established with the Barhams, and though they lay more out of her path, so to speak, than the others, she resolved not to let the threads of her intercourse with mother and son drop on landing. She felt really interested in the young man; she should be sorry to think this was to be the end of their long talks and discussions, pacing the deck, or watching the moonlight upon the sea, on warm nights, as they leaned over the bulwarks.

Quintin Ferrars also she had grown to know, and to like better. That is to say, she liked some parts of him better and disliked other parts less, recognized his ability and made more allowances for his cynicism, as all women do for the cynicism of a man who is never cynical at their expense. Conversation with him stimulated thought; and, though it generally roused opposition, left something behind it to be pondered over and re-discussed with that other self which only makes itself heard very often when both speakers are silent.

Mrs. Courtly Grace admired and liked more and more. She had expected to find the gracious little lady too much of "a man's woman" to take much thought for her, an English girl. They could have but a small community of interest, she thought; and "men's women" were, as a rule, distasteful to her. But, whatever her faults might be, Mrs. Courtly, she felt sure, was a really kind woman; and, moreover, so appreciative, so amusing, and so many-sided, that Grace found it impossible to resist her charm. What a blessed gift (taking too low a stand among the virtues—indeed, not regarded as a virtue at all by some) is tact! Mrs. Courtly possessed it in a conspicuous degree. She never said anything to wound the susceptibilities of her audience; whereas Mrs. Van Winkle, clever as she was, never seemed to have any perception of when she might, with impunity, astonish her audience, and when it would be wiser to sacrifice that keen but momentary enjoyment. Vanity, and a desire to maintain her reputation for audacious wit, rendered her case-hardened against shocked looks. She said to Grace,

"You know, the very last person with whom one should be seen in New York society is one's husband. Now, I started very badly; I began married life by being really in love with mine, and, socially, it nearly ruined me. It has taken me fifteen years to live it down, and I am only just recovering from the fatal mistake I made."

The girl knew exactly what value to attach to such utterances as these. She never gratified the speaker by looking surprised.

Grace stood on the deck with Saul Barham as the Teutonic slowly, almost imperceptibly, neared the landing-wharf. A thick fog had shrouded the great Statue of Liberty, the shores of New Jersey, Staten Island, and all the features of the beautiful sea-avenue to New York.

"I am angry," said Barham, "that you should not have a better impression of the city on landing. It is too bad to have a fog here to greet you that is worthy of London."

"A delicate attention on the part of America to make us Britishers feel 'at home.'"