Ancestors by Gertrude Atherton

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PART I

1904

I

Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the
teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after
two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she
made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends
Victoria Gwynne required the most delicate touch. Flora had learned to
be audacious without taking a liberty, which, indeed, was one secret of
her success; but although she prided herself upon her reading of this
enigma, whom even the ancestral dames of Capheaton looked down upon
inspectively, she was never quite sure of her ground. She particularly
wished to avoid mistakes upon the renewal of an intimacy kept alive by a
fitful correspondence during her sojourn on the Continent. Quite apart
from self-interest, she liked no one as well, and her curiosity was
tempered by a warm sympathy and a genuine interest. It was this capacity
for friendship, and her unlimited good-nature, that had saved her,
penniless as she was, from the ignominious footing of the social
parasite. The daughter of a clergyman in a Yorkshire village, and the
playmate in childhood of the little girls of the castle near by, she had
realized early in life that although pretty and well-bred, she was not
yet sufficiently dowered by either nature or fortune to hope for a
brilliant marriage; and she detested poverty. Upon her father's death
she must earn her bread, and, reasoning that self-support was merely the
marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent
body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the role of
useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted
niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to
perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity
of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more
corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only
clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become
so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming
in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere
husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied
existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.

It was not often that a kindly fate had overlooked her for so long a
period as two years, and when she had accepted the invitation of one of
the old castle playmates to visit her in Florence, it had been with a
lively anticipation that made dismay the more poignant in the face of
hypochondria. Nevertheless, realizing her debt to this first of her
patrons, and with much of her old affection revived, she wandered from
one capital and specialist to the next, until death gave her liberty.
She was not unrewarded, but the legacy inspired her with no desire for
an establishment beyond her room at the Club in Dover Street, the
companionship of friends not too exacting, the agreeable sense of
indispensableness, and a certain splendor of environment which gave a
warmth and color to life; and which she could not have commanded had she
set up in middle years as an independent spinster of limited income. She
had received many impatient letters while abroad, to which she had
replied with fluent affection and picturesque gossip, never losing touch
for a moment. When release came she had hastened home to book herself
for the house-parties, and with Victoria Gwynne, although one of the
least opulent of her friends, first on the list. She had had several
correspondents as ardent as herself, and there was little gossip of the
more intimate sort that had not reached her sooner or later, but she
found subtle changes in Victoria for which she could not as yet account.
She had now been at Capheaton and alone with her friend for three days,
but there had been a stress of duties for both, and the hostess had
never been more silent. To-day, as she seemed even less inclined to
conversation, although manifestly nervous, Miss Thangue merely drank her
tea with an air of being too comfortable and happy in England and
Capheaton for intellectual effort, and patiently waited for a cue or an
inspiration. But although she too kept silence, memory and imagination
held rendezvous in her circumspect brain, and she stole more than one
furtive glance at her companion.

Lady Victoria Gwynne, one of the tallest women of her time and still one
of the handsomest, had been extolled all her life for that fusion of the
romantic and the aristocratic ideals that so rarely find each other in
the same shell; and loved by a few. Her round slender figure, supple
with exercise and ignorant of disease, her black hair and eyes, the
utter absence of color in her smooth Orientally white skin, the mouth,
full at the middle and curving sharply upward at the corners, and the
irregular yet delicate nose that seemed presented as an afterthought to
save that brilliant and subtle face from classic severity, made her
look--for the most part--as if fashioned for the picture-gallery or the
poem, rather than for the commonplaces of life. Always one of those
Englishwomen that let their energy be felt rather than expressed, for
she made no effort in conversation whatever, her once mobile face had of
late years, without aging, composed itself into a sort of illuminated
mask. As far as possible removed from that other ideal, the British
Matron, and still suggesting an untamed something in the complex centres
of her character, she yet looked so aloof, so monumental, that she had
recently been painted by a great artist for a world exhibition, as an
illustration of what centuries of breeding and selection had done for
the noblewomen of England.

Some years before, a subtle Frenchman had expressed her in such a
fashion that while many vowed he had given to the world an epitome of
romantic youth, others remarked cynically that his handsome subject
looked as if about to seat herself on the corner of the table and smoke
a cigarette. The American artist, although habitually cruel to his
patrons, had, after triumphantly transferring the type to the canvas,
drawn to the surface only so much of the soul of the woman as all that
ran might admire. If there was a hint of bitterness in the lower part of
the face, from the eyes there looked an indomitable courage and much
sweetness. Only in the carnage of the head, the tilt of the chin, was
the insolence expressed that had made her many enemies. Some of the
wildest stories of the past thirty years had been current about her, and
rejected or believed according to the mental habit or personal bias of
those that tinker with reputations. The late Queen, it was well known,
had detested her, and made no secret of her resentment that through the
short-sighted loyalty of one of the first members of her Household, the
dangerous creature had been named after her. But whatever her secrets,
open scandal Lady Victoria had avoided: imperturbably, without even an
additional shade of insolence, never apologizing nor explaining;
wherein, no doubt, lay one secret of her strength. And then her
eminently respectable husband, Arthur Gwynne, second son of the Marquess
of Strathland and Zeal, had always fondly alluded to her as "The
Missus," and lauded her as a repository of all the unfashionable
virtues. To-day, presiding at the tea-table in her son's country-house,
an eager light in her eyes, she looked like neither of her portraits:
more nearly approached, perhaps, poor Arthur Gwynne's ideal of her; not
in the least the frozen stoic of the past three days. When she finally
made an uncontrollable movement that half-overturned the cream-jug,
Flora Thangue's curiosity overcame her, and she murmured, tentatively:

"If I had ever seen you nervous before, Vicky--"

"I am not nervous, but allowances are to be made for maternal anxiety."

"Oh!" Miss Thangue drew a deep breath. She continued, vaguely, "Oh, the
maternal role--"

"Have I ever failed as a mother?" asked Lady Victoria, dispassionately.

"No, but you are so many other things, too. Somehow, when I am away from
you I see you in almost every other capacity."

"Jack is thirty and I am forty-nine."

"_You_ look thirty," replied Flora, with equal candor.

"I am thankful that my age is in Lodge; I can never be tempted to enroll
myself with the millions that were married when just sixteen."

"Oh, you never could make a fool of yourself," murmured her friend.
Then, as Victoria showed signs of relapsing into silence, she plunged in
recklessly; "Jack is bound to be elected. When has he ever failed to get
what he wanted? But you, Vicky dear--is there anything wrong? You had a
bulky letter from California the day I arrived. I do hope that tiresome
property is not giving you trouble. What a pity it is such a long way
off."

"The San Francisco lease runs out shortly. Half of that, and the
southern ranch, are my only independent sources of income. The northern
ranch belongs to Jack. All three are getting less and less easy to let
in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper
already."

"This is not so bad," murmured Flora.

"Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to
Jack."

"It would be a pity; it suits you." She was not referring to the hall,
which was somewhat too light and small for the heroic mould of its
chatelaine, but to the noble proportions of the old house itself, and
the treasures that had accumulated since the first foundations were laid
in the reign of Henry VI. There were rooms hung with ugly brocades and
velvets never duplicated, state bed-chambers and boudoirs sacred to the
memory of personages whose dust lay half-forgotten in their marbles; but
above all, Capheaton was famous for its pictures. Not only was there an
unusually large number of portraits by masters scattered about the
twenty rooms that lay behind and on either side of the hall, but many
hundreds of those portraits and landscapes from the brushes of artists
fashionable in their day, unknown in the annals of art, but seeming to
emit a faint scent of lavender and rose leaves from the walls of
England's old manor-houses and castles. In the dining-room there was a
full-length portrait of Mary Tudor, black but for the yellow face and
hands and ruff; and another, the scarlet coat and robust complexion
still fresh, of the fourth George, handsome, gay, devil-may-care; both
painted to commemorate visits to Capheaton, historically hospitable in
the past. But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six
daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as
peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights
of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect. Having a still larger
estate to keep up, he had been glad to lend Capheaton to his second son,
who, being an excellent manager and assisted by his wife's income, had
lived very comfortably upon its yield. Upon his death Elton Gwynne had
assumed possession as a matter of course; and a handsome allowance from
his doting grandfather supplementing his inheritance, the mind of the
haughty and promising young gentleman was free of sordid anxieties.

Lady Victoria's satirical gaze swept the simpering portraits of her
son's great-aunts and grandmothers, with which the hall was
promiscuously hung.

"Of course I am as English as if the strain had never been crossed, if
you mean that. But I'd rather like to get away for a while. I really
ought to visit my California estates, and I have always wanted to see
that part of America. I started for it once, but never even reached the
western boundaries of New York. One of us should spend a year there, at
least; and of course it is out of the question for Jack to leave England
again."

"You would not spend six months out of Curzon Street. You are the most
confirmed Londoner I know."

"Do you think so?"

Miss Thangue replied, impulsively, "I have often wondered if you
numbered satiety among your complexities!"

This was as far as she had ever adventured into the mysterious
backwaters of Victoria's soul, and she dropped her eyelids lest a
deprecating glance meet the contempt it deserved; both with a due regard
for the limit imposed by good taste, despised the faint heart.

"I hate the sight of London!" Her tone had changed so suddenly that
Flora winked. "If it were not for Jack I would leave--get out. I am sick
of the whole game."

"Oh, be on your guard," cried her friend, sharply. "That sort of thing
means the end of youth."

"Youth after fifty depends upon your doctor, your masseuse, and your
dressmaker. I do not say that my present state of mind is sown with
evergreens and immortelles, but the fact remains that for the present I
have come to the end of myself and am interested in no one on earth but
Jack."

Miss Thangue stared into her teacup, recalling the gossip of a year ago,
although she had given it little heed at the time: Victoria had been
transiently interested so often! But all the world knew that when Arthur
Gwynne was killed Sir Cadge Vanneck had been off his head about
Victoria; and that when obvious restrictions vanished into the family
vault he had left abruptly for Rhodesia to develop his mines, and had
not found time to return since. Sir Cadge was about the same age as the
famous beauty, and rose quite two inches above her lofty head. People
had grown accustomed to the fine appearance they made when
together--"Artie" was ruddy and stout--and although Victoria reinforced
her enemies, for Vanneck was one of the most agreeable and accomplished
men in London, the artistic sense of that lenient world was tickled at
their congruities and took their future mating for granted; Arthur
Gwynne was sure to meet his death on the hunting-field, for he was far
too heavy for a horse and rode vilely. When he fulfilled his destiny and
Vanneck fled, the world was as much annoyed as amused. But they were
amused, and Flora Thangue knew that this gall must have bitten deeper
than the loss of Vanneck, who may or may not have made an impression on
this woman too proud and too spoiled to accept homage in public
otherwise than passively, whatever may have been the unwritten tale of
her secret hours. The excuses hazarded by Vanneck's friends were neither
humorous nor sentimental, but no one denied that they were eminently
sensible: his first wife had died childless, his estates were large, his
title was one of the oldest in England. But although no one pitied
Victoria Gwynne, many were annoyed at having their mental attitude
disarranged, and this no doubt had kept the gossip alive and been a
constant source of irritation to a woman whose sense of humor was as
deep as her pride.

Flora replied at random. "Jack couldn't very well get on without you."

His mother's eyes flashed. "I flatter myself he could not--at present.
If Julia Kaye would only marry him!"

"She won't," cried Flora, relieved at the change of tone. "And
why do you wish it? She is two years older, of quite dreadful
origin--and--well--I don't like her; perhaps my opinion is a little
biased."

"She is immensely rich, one of the ablest political women in London, and
Jack is desperately in love with her."

"I cannot picture Jack in extremities about any one, although I don't
deny that he has his sentimental seizures. He even made love to me when
he was cutting his teeth. But he doesn't need a lot of money, you rank
higher than she among the political women, and--well, I believe her to
be bad-tempered, and more selfish than any woman I have ever known."

"He loves her. He wants her. He would dominate any woman he married. He
is such a dear that no woman who lived with him could help loving him.
Moreover, she is inordinately ambitious, and Jack's career is the most
promising in England."

"Jack is far too good for her, and I am glad that he will not get her. I
happen to know that she has made up her mind to marry Lord Brathland."

"Bratty is a donkey."

"She would be the last to deny it, but he is certain to be a duke if he
lives, and she would marry a man that had to be led round with a string
for the sake of being called 'your grace' by the servants. She'll never
be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now
will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she
thinks a duchess is a duchess."

"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.

"Doesn't it? Nevertheless--you know it as well as I do--among the people
that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put
in their place before this--you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has
kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves,
and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper
air--well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a
duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the role."

"We can be rude enough."

"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."

"She is astonishingly clever."

"Duchesses are born--even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never
succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of
rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor
Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll
become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end
of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the
_Morning Post_. The back of her head will be quite in line with her
charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her
face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious
speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person
of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."

Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat
irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to
amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of
the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare
sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain
sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always
covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions,
assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to
the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes
were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman
of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the
face arrested the lover of detail.

"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.

"Quite."

"I am sorry. It will be a great blow to Jack. I hoped she would come
round in time."

"She will marry Brathland. I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at
Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the
announcement any day--she'll write it herself for the _Morning Post_.
How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense
amount of work he gets through?--and his really immodest ambitions!
By-the-way--isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat? But
as I said just now I do not associate Jack with defeat. His trifling
set-backs have merely served to throw his manifest destiny into higher
relief."

"The telegram should have come an hour ago. I have few doubts--and yet
he has so many enemies. I wonder if we shall be born into a world, after
we have been sufficiently chastened here, where one can get one's head
above the multitude without rousing some of the most hideous qualities
in human nature? It is a great responsibility! But there has been no
such speaker, nor fighter, for a quarter of a century." Her eyes glowed
again. "And heaven knows I have worked for him."

"What a pity he is not a Tory! He could have a dozen boroughs for the
asking. I wish he were. The whole Liberal party makes me sick. And it is
against every tradition of his family--"

"As if that mattered. Besides, he is a born fighter. He'd hate anything
he could have for the asking. And he's far too modern, too progressive,
for the Conservative party--even if there were anything but blue-mould
left in it."

"Well, you know I am not original, and my poor old dad brought us up on
the soundest Tory principles; he never would even compromise on the word
Conservative. But considering that Jack is as Liberal as if the taint
were in the marrow of his bones, what a blessing that poor Artie did not
happen to be the oldest son. Cecilia says they were all talking of it at
Maundrell Abbey, where of course it is a peculiarly interesting topic.
That ornamental and conscientious peer, Lord Barnstable, has never
ceased to regret his father's death, for reasons far removed from
sentimental. He told Cecilia that Lord Strathland almost confessed to
him that he would give his right eye to hand over his old shoes to Jack,
not only because he detests Zeal, but because it would take the backbone
out of his Liberalism--"

"And ruin _his_ career. Thank heaven Zeal is engaged at last. They will
marry in the spring, and then the only cloud on Jack's horizon will
vanish."

"What if there were no children?"

"There are so much more often than not--that is the least of my worries.
He had five girls by his first wife; there is no reason why this
splendid cow I have picked out should not produce a dozen boys. I never
worked so hard over one of Jack's elections--not only to overcome Zeal's
misogyny, which he calls scruples, but I had to fight Strathland every
inch of the way. When I think of Jack's desperation if he were
pitchforked up into the Peers--you do not know him as I do."

"Well, he is safe for a time, I fancy. There has been consumption in the
family before, and always the slowest sort--"

A footman entered with a yellow envelope on a tray.

Lady Victoria opened it without haste or change of color.

"Jack is returned," she said.

"How jolly," replied the other, with equal indifference.

II

"You look tired--I will take you up to your room. Vicky has so many on
her hands."

The American rose slowly, but with a flash of gratitude in her eyes.

"I am tired, and I don't know a soul here. I almost wish Lady Victoria
had not asked me down, although I have wanted all my life to visit one
of the ancestral homes of England."

"Oh, you'll get over that, and used to us," said Miss Thangue, smiling.
"Your staircase is behind this door, and we can slip out without
attracting attention. They are all gabbling over Jack's election."

She opened a door in a corner of the hall where the newly arrived guests
were gathered about Lady Victoria's tea-table, and led the way up a wide
dark and slippery stair. After the first landing the light was stronger,
and the walls were, to an inch, covered with portraits and landscapes,
the effect almost as careless as if the big open space were a
lumber-room.

"Are they _all_ old masters?" asked Miss Isabel Otis, politely, her eyes
roving over the dark canvases.

"Oh no; the masters are down-stairs. I'll show them to you to-morrow.
These are not bad, though."

"What a lot of ancestors to have!"

"Oh, you'll find them all over the house. These are not Gwynnes. This
house came to Lord Strathland through the female line. It will be Jack's
eventually--one way or another; and Jack must be more like the Eltons
than the Gwynnes--unless, indeed, he is like his American ancestors."
She turned her soft non-committal eyes on the stranger. "You are his
thirty-first cousin, are you not?"

"Not quite so remote. But why do you call him Jack? He is known to fame
as Elton Gwynne."

"His name is John Elton Cecil Gwynne. We are given to the nickname these
days--to the abbreviation in general."

They were walking down a corridor, and Miss Thangue was peering through
her lorgnette at the cards on the doors.

"I know you are on this side. I wrote your name myself. But exactly
where--ah, here it is."

She opened the door of a square room with large roses on the white
wall-paper, and fine old mahogany furniture. The sofa and chairs and
windows were covered with a chintz in harmony with the walls. "It is
cheerful, don't you think so?" asked Miss Thangue, drawing one of the
straight curtains aside. "Vicky had all the rooms done over, and I chose
the designs. She is quite intolerantly modern, and holds that when
wall-paper and chintz can save an old house from looking like a
sarcophagus, why not have them? That bell-cord connects with your maid's
room--"

"I have no maid. I am not well off at all. I wonder Lady Victoria
thought it worth while to ask me down."

"Dear me, how odd! May I sit with you a little while? I never before saw
a poor American girl."

"I'll be only too grateful if you will stay with me as long as you can.
I am not exactly poor. I have a ranch near Rosewater, some property and
an old house in San Francisco. All that makes me comfortable, but no
more; and there are so many terribly rich American girls!"

"There are, indeed!" Miss Thangue sat forward with the frank curiosity
of the Englishwoman when inspecting a foreign specimen. But her
curiosity was kindly, for she was still a girl at heart, interested in
other girls. Miss Otis, looking at her blond, virginal face, took for
granted that she was under thirty, and owed her weight to a fondness for
sweets and sauces.

"How can you travel in Europe if you are not rich?" demanded Flora. "I
never dare venture over except as the guest of some more fortunate
friend."

"Are _you_ poor?" asked Miss Otis, her eye arrested by the smart little
afternoon frock of lace and chiffon and crepe-de-chine.

"Oh, horribly. But then we all are, over here. If it were not for the
Jews and the Americans we'd have to make our own clothes. The
dressmakers never could afford to give us credit."

"They all looked very wealthy down-stairs."

"Smart, rather. This happens to be a set that knows how to dress. Many
don't. You know something of it yourself," she added, with a frank
survey of the girl's well-cut travelling-frock and small hat. "Lots of
Americans don't, if you don't mind my saying so--for all their
reputation. I went to a dinner at an American Legation once and two of
your countrywomen came with their hats on. They had brought letters to
the Minister, and he hadn't taken the precaution of looking them over.
He was terribly mortified, poor thing."

She related the anecdote with philanthropic intention, but Miss Otis put
her half-rejected doubts to flight by remarking, lightly:

"We don't do that even in Rosewater."

"Where _is_ Rosewater? What a jolly name!"

"It is in northern California, not far from Lady Victoria's ranch and
what is left of ours. I have spent most of my life in or near it--my
father was a lawyer."

"Do tell me about yourself!" Like most amiable spinsters, she was as
interested in the suggestive stranger as in a new novel. She sank with a
sigh of comfort into the depths of the chair. "May I smoke? Are you
shocked?"

Then she  apprehensively, fearing that her doubt might be
construed as an insult to Rosewater.

But Miss Otis met it with her first smile. "Oh no," she replied. "Will
you give me one? Mine are in my trunk and they haven't brought it up."
She took a cigarette from the gayly tendered case and smoked for a few
moments in silence.

"I don't know why you should be interested in my history," she said at
last in her slow cold voice, so strikingly devoid of the national
animation. "It has been far too uneventful. I have an adopted sister,
six years older than myself, who married twelve years ago. Her husband
is an artist in San Francisco, rather a genius, so they are always poor.
My mother died when I was little. After my sister married I took care of
my father until I was twenty-one, when he died--four years ago. There
are very good schools in Rosewater, particularly the High School. My
father also taught me languages. He had a very fine library. But I do
not believe this interests you. Doubtless you want to know something of
the life with which Lady Victoria is so remotely connected."

"I am far more interested in you. Tell me whichever you like first. How
_are_ you related, by-the-way?"

"Father used to draw our family tree whenever he had bronchitis in
winter. One of the most famous of the Spanish Californians was Don Jose
Argueello. We are descended from one of his sons, who had a ranch of a
hundred thousand acres in the south. When the Americans came, long
after, they robbed the Californians shamefully, but fortunately the son
of the Argueello that owned the ranch at the time married an American
girl whose father bought up the mortgages. He left the property to his
only grandchild, a girl, who married my great-grandfather, James Otis--a
northern rancher, born in Boston, and descended from old Sam Adams. He
had two children, a boy and a girl, who inherited the northern and
southern ranches in equal shares. The girl came over to England to visit
an aunt who lived here, was presented at court, and straightway married
a lord."

"Then you are second cousin to Vicky and third to Jack. I had no idea
the relationship was so close."

"It has seemed very remote to me ever since I laid eyes on Lady Victoria
down-stairs. Father made me promise, just before he died, that if ever I
visited Europe I would look her up. Somehow I hadn't thought of her
except as Elton Gwynne's mother, so I wrote to her without a qualm. But
I see that she is an individual."

"Rather! How self-contained our great London is, after all! Vicky has
been a beauty for over thirty years--to be sure her fame was at its
height before you were old enough to be interested in such things. But I
should have thought your father--"

"He must have known all about her. It comes back to me that he was very
proud of the connection for more than family reasons, but it made no
impression on me at the time."

"Proud?"

"Yes, he was rather a snob. He was very clever, but he fell out of
things, and being able to dwell on his English and Spanish connections
meant a good deal to him. I can recite the family history backwards."

"But if he was clever, why on earth did he live in Rosewater? Surely he
could have practised in San Francisco?"

"He drank. When a man drinks he doesn't care much where he lives. My
father had fads but no ambition."

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Miss Thangue, aghast at this toneless
frankness. "You must have been glad to be rid of him!"

"I was fond of him, but his death was a great relief. He was a hard
steady secret drinker. I nursed him through several attacks of delirium
tremens, and was always in fear that he would get out and disgrace us.
Sometimes he did, although when I saw the worst coming I generally
managed to get him over to the ranch. Of course it tied me down. I
rarely even visited my sister. My father hated San Francisco. He had
practised there in his youth, promised great things, had plenty of
money. The time came--" She shrugged her shoulders, although without the
slightest change of expression. "I never lived my own life until he
died, but I have lived it ever since."

"And the first thing you did with your liberty was to come to Europe,"
said Miss Thangue, with a sympathetic smile.

"Of course. My father and uncle had got rid of most of their property
long before they died; there isn't an acre left of our share in the
southern estate. But my uncle died six years ago and willed me all that
remained of the northern, as well as some land in the poorer quarter of
San Francisco. I could not touch the principal during the lifetime of my
father, but we lived on the ranch and I managed it and was entitled, by
the terms of the will, to what I could make it yield. When I was finally
mistress of my fortunes I left it in charge of an old servant, sold
enough to pay off the mortgage on a property in San Francisco I
inherited from my mother, and came to Europe with a personally conducted
tour."

Miss Thangue shuddered. The phrase unrolled a vista of commonness and
attrition. Miss Otis continued, calmly: "That is the way I should feel
now. But it was my only chance then; or rather I had seen enough of
business to avoid making mistakes when I could. In that way I learned
the ropes. After we had been rushed about for six weeks and I could not
have told you whether the Pitti Palace was in Italy or France, and the
celebrated frescos were one vast pink smudge, the party returned and I
wandered on by myself. I spent a winter in Paris, and months in
Brittany, Austria, Italy, Spain--Munich." It was here that her even
tones left their register for a second. "I studied the languages, the
literatures, the peoples, music, pictures. In Munich"--this time Flora's
alert ear detected no vibration--"and also in Rome, I saw something of
society. It was a life full of freedom, and I shall never cease to be
grateful for it, but I must go home soon and look after my affairs. I
left England to the last, like the best things of the banquet. I hope
Lady Victoria--I shall never be able to call her Cousin Victoria, as I
remember father did--will be nice to me. I have seen a good deal of
life, but have never had a real _girl's_ time, and I should love it.
Besides, I have a lot of new frocks."

"I am sure Vicky will be nice to you. If she isn't, I'll find some one
that will be. You might marry Jack if you had money enough. We are dying
to get him married--and a California cousin--it would be too romantic.
And you would hold your own anywhere!"

But Miss Otis expanded a fine nostril. "I have no desire to marry. I
feel as if I had had enough of men to last until I am forty--what with
those I have buried, and others I have known at home and in Europe--to
say nothing of the executors of my uncle's will, who did not approve of
my coming abroad alone and delayed the settlement of the estate as long
as possible. And now I have had too much liberty! Besides, I have seen
'Jack's' picture--two years ago, in a magazine. I will confess I had
some romantic notions about him: imagined him very dashing, bold,
handsome; insolent, if you like--the traditional young aristocrat,
glorified by genius. He looks like Uncle Hiram."

"Is that who Jack looks like? We never could make out. No, Jack is not
much to look at, except when he wakes up--I have seen him quite
transfigured on the platform. But he is as insolent as you could wish,
and has a superb confidence in himself that his enemies call by the most
offensive names. But he is a dear, in spite of all, and I quite adore
him."

"Perhaps; but life, myself, so many mysteries and problems, upon which
I have barely turned a dark lantern as yet, interest me far more than
any man could, unless he were superlative. I have had my disillusions."

She lit another cigarette, and for a few moments looked silently out of
the window at the darkening woods beyond the lawn. Flora Thangue
regarded her with a swelling interest. It was a type of which she had no
knowledge, evidently not a common type even in the hypothetical land of
the free; she had visited New York and Newport and known many Americans.
True, she had never met the provincial type before, but she doubted if
Rosewater had produced a crop of Isabel Otises. What was at the source
of that cold-blooded frankness, so different from the English fashion of
alternately speaking out and knowing nothing? Was she merely an
egoist--it ran in the family--or did it conceal much that she had no
intention of revealing? Her very beauty was of a type rarely seen in the
America of to-day, prevalent as it may have been a hundred years ago:
she looked like a feminine edition of the first group of American
statesmen--although black Spanish hair was pulled carelessly over the
high forehead, a heavy coil encircling the head in a long upward sweep,
and the half-dreaming, half-penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes
was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick,
the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the
lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of
character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head,
that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a
nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one
by his inherited shell. She had observed many Americans with fine heads
and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German
heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of
the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of
breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald
instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on
trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities
in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed
of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the
fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.

Only in the dense silky masses of her black hair and the almost stolid
absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how
much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in
passive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes
of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely
a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible
and passionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his
abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then?
The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low
brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the
average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her
faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin
as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of
her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men,
would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious,
mocking, yet unmistakably passionate and possibly insurgent, was of
that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began.
But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any
case, capable of clasping a man's throat with her strong little hand,
and gently turning his head from east to west. At this point Miss
Thangue rose impatiently and rang a bell. Jack's career was almost at
the flood. No woman could submerge his intellect and stupendous
interests for more than a moment.

"Order lights and have your trunks brought up," she said. "I will send
one of the housemaids to help you dress. My room is over on the other
side of the house--go through that door opposite, and down a corridor
until you come to another long hall and staircase like the one on this
side. You will find my name on the door. Knock at about a quarter-past
eight and I will go down with you. Vicky may be in an angelic humor and
she may not. It depends mainly upon whether Jack condescends to turn up.
I suppose you know all about him; it would hardly do for you to face him
and his mother if you didn't. He has travelled quite exhaustively in the
colonies and given us some of the most informing literature on that
subject that we have. He was out in Africa when the Boer War broke out,
and once before in India, when there was fighting, volunteered both
times and did brilliant service. He has no end of medals with clasps.
Then he suddenly went in for politics and announced himself an
uncompromising Liberal. It nearly killed his grandfather--Lord
Strathland--for Jack is the one person on earth that he loves as much as
himself; and it has alienated many of his relatives on both sides--which
gave him one more chance to win against terrific odds; he enjoys that
sort of thing. He had been in but two years when there was a general
election, and he has only just got back--he contested three divisions
before he won his seat this time, and he had almost as hard a fight
before. Vicky, who hates the Gwynnes, with the exception of Lord Zeal,
the heir, besides believing in Jack as you would in Solomon, has
steadily upheld him; and she is a powerful ally--not only one of the
most distinguished of the political women, but still turns heads when
she chooses, and her game is generally in the cabinet preserves, when it
is not in the diplomatic. I must run. Put on your most fetching gown.
Julia Kaye, a detestable little parvenu, is here. Jack is in love with
her and she has chosen another. It will be a cousinly duty to console
him. Then you can turn him over to some one else. Ta, ta!" Her last
words floated back from the depths of the corridor; a clock was striking
and she had pattered off hastily.

III

The "Jack," whose more distinguished patronymic was so gayly caracolling
down the road to posterity, had arrived, and after dressing hastily,
sought his mother. Her hair was done, her gown laced; she dismissed her
maid at once, and while her eyes melted, in the fashion of mothers, she
embraced her son with something more than maternal warmth: a curious
suggestion of relief, of stepping out of her own personality and leaving
it like a heap of clothes on the floor. This attitude had occasionally
puzzled her idol, but he was too masculine to analyze. She was his best
friend and a delightful person to have for a mother; her soul might be
her own possession undisturbed. He admired her almost as much as he did
himself, and to-night he kissed her fondly and told her gallantly that
she was looking even more beautiful than usual.

"It is all this white after the dead black," said Lady Victoria, smiling
appreciatively. "I am thankful that prolonged mourning is out of date;
it made a fright of me and was getting on my nerves." She wore no jewels
save a high diamond dog-collar and a few sparkling combs in her hair,
but she made a superb appearance with the long white sweep of shoulders
and bust, her brilliant eyes and smart tailed gown of black chiffon and
Irish lace. Her arms, no longer rounded as when artists had fought to
paint her, were but half-revealed under floating sleeves, and her fair
tapering hands were even younger than her face.

She opened a large black fan and moved it slowly while looking intently
at her son's bent profile. "Something has gone wrong," she said. "Have
you seen Julia Kaye again?"

"No, I was invited to Maundrell Abbey last week, but couldn't manage it,
of course. And I knew she was to be here. Nothing has gone wrong--but I
had rather a shock this morning. I met Zeal at the club. He looks like a
death's head. He vowed he was taking even better care of himself than
usual, but his chest is bad again. He talked about going to Davos--the
very word makes me sick! In the next breath he said he might go out to
Africa. Can't you hurry on his marriage?--persuade Carry that it is her
duty to go with him?"

"I should have no difficulty persuading Carry. The rub is with him.
Compulsory asceticism has bred misogyny, and misogyny scruples. He says
that he has sins enough to his account without laying up a reckoning
with posterity. If it were not for you I should agree with him. I feel
like a conspirator--"

"There is no reason why his children should be consumptive. Carry's
physique is Wagnerian, and she is just the woman to look after her
children herself. Zeal's health was thrown to the dogs by a weak
indulgent frivolous mother, and what she left him he disposed of later
when he made as great an ass of himself as might have been expected. He
is a hypochondriac now and would keep a close watch on his heir's health
and habits; you may be sure of that. He ought not to be in London
now--it is stifling--went up for some business meeting or other--seemed
to wish to avoid details. I hope to heaven he has not been relieving the
monotony of his life by some rotten speculation. I begged him to come
down here, but he wouldn't--says that his hand is no longer steady
enough to hold a gun--it's awful!--worse because I'm not merely fond of
him and regretting the possible loss of a good friend--I have felt like
a beast all day. But I can't help it. For God's sake write and persuade
him to go to Davos at once--and picture the delights of a pretty and
devoted nurse. I feel as if I had ashes in my mouth--and yesterday I was
so happy!" he burst out, with the petulance of a child.

"I will write to-night," she said, soothingly. "He has a very slow form
of consumption; I have the assurance of his doctors. And at least he has
committed himself with Carry, and announced his intention to marry as
soon as a sojourn somewhere has made him feel fit again. You know how
much better he always is when he comes back. Put it out of your mind
to-night. I want you to be as happy as I am. Everybody is talking of the
brilliance of your campaign--"

"Much good brilliance will do me if I am to rot in the Upper House!"

"Put it out of your mind; don't let apprehension control you for a
moment. Believe me, will-power counts in life for more than everything
else combined, and if it isn't watched it weakens."

"All right, mummy. You are never so original as when you preach. So
Julia Kaye came down this afternoon? Talk about will. Mine should be of
pure steel; I have ordered her out of my consciousness these last weeks
at the point of the bayonet. She has written me exactly three times.
However--those letters were charming," he added, with the sudden smile
that transfigured his face, routing the overbearing and contemptuous
expression that had won him so many enemies; friends and flatterers and
the happy circumstances of his life had combined thoroughly to spoil
him. "Do you maintain that will can win a woman?" he added, sharply.

She was the woman to laugh outright at such a suggestion. "No, nor that
it can uproot love, although it can give it a good shaking and lock it
in the dark room. I doubt if you love Julia Kaye, but you will find that
out for yourself. You might bring her to terms by flirting a little with
your American cousin--"

"My what?" He opened his eyes as widely as he had ever done when a
school-boy.

"Of course--I forgot you know nothing of her. She wrote me from
Ambleside--I infer she has been 'doing' England; and as her credentials
were unimpeachable I asked her down. She has inherited a part of the
northern estate and was brought up in the neighboring town of
Rosewater--the American names are too silly. She seems quite _comme il
faut_ and is remarkably handsome. I detest Americans, as you know, but
there certainly is something in blood. I liked her at once. She looks
clever, and is quite off the type--none of the usual fluff. If she
doesn't bore me I shall keep her here for a while."

"I wish you would adopt her," he said, fondly. "I shouldn't be jealous,
for I hate to think of you so much alone." He rose and kissed her
lightly on the forehead, experience teaching him to avoid a stray hair
from the carefully built coiffure. "I'll see if I can waylay Julia on
the stairs; she is always late. Keep from eleven to twelve for me
to-morrow morning. I want to tell you about the campaign. It was a
glorious fight!" His eyes sparkled at the memory of it. "I felt as if
every bit of me had never been alive at once before. My opponent was a
splendid chap. It meant something to beat him. The other side was in a
rage!--more than once yelled for half an hour after I took the platform.
When I finished they yelled again for half an hour--to a different
tune." His slight, thin, rather graceless figure seemed suddenly to
expand, even to grow taller. Some hidden magnetism burst from him like
an aura, and his cold pasty face and light gray eyes flamed into
positive beauty. "It was glorious! Glorious! I was intoxicated--I could
have reeled, little as they suspected it. I wouldn't part for a second
with the certainty that I am the biggest figure in young England to-day.
I hate to sleep and forget it. If I cultivated modesty I should renounce
one of the exquisite pleasures of life. Humility is a superstition. The
man who doesn't weed it out is an ass. To be young, well-born, with
money enough, a brain instead of a mere intelligence, an essential
leader of men--Good God! Good God!" Then he subsided and blushed, jerked
up his shoulders and laughed. "Well--I never let myself go to any one
but you," he said. "And I won't inflict _you_ any longer."

IV

"I wish the old homes of England had electric lights," thought Miss
Otis, with a sigh.

There were four candles on the dressing-table, two on the mantel-shelf;
beyond the radius of their light the room was barely visible. She
carried one of the candles over to the cheval-glass and held it above
her head, close to her face, low on either side.

"I feel as if I had been put together by some unpleasant mechanical
process. It is well I am not inordinately vain, but when one puts on a
new dress for the first time--" She shrugged her shoulders hopelessly,
replaced the candle, and walked up and down the room swinging the
train--her first--of the charming gown of pale blue satin; patting the
hair coiled softly about the entire head in a line eminently becoming to
the profile, and prolonged by several little curls escaping to the neck.

She felt happy and excited, her fine almost severe face far more
girlishly alive than when she had told her story, provocatively dry, to
Flora Thangue. She directed an approving glance at the high heels of her
slippers, which, with her lofty carriage, produced the effect of
non-existing inches. She was barely five feet five, but she ranked with
tall women, her height as unchallenged as the chiselling of her profile.

"What frauds we all are!" she thought, with a humor of which she had
not vouchsafed Miss Thangue a hint. "But what is a cunningly made
slipper on a foot not so small, at the end of a body not quite long
enough, but an encouraging example of the triumph of art over nature?
Not the superiority, perhaps, but they are the best of working
partners."

She sat down and recalled the conversation with her new friend, giving
an amused little shudder. She had heard much of, and in her travels come
into contact with, the cold-blooded frankness of the English elect; with
whom it was either an instinct or a pose to manifest their careless
sense of impregnability. When pressed to give an account of herself the
dramatic possibilities of the method suddenly appealed to her,
accompanied by a mischievous desire to outdo them at their own game and
observe the effect. She had found herself as absorbed as an actress in a
new and congenial role.

"After all," she thought, "clever women make themselves over in great
part, uprooting here, adopting there, and as we have so little chance to
_be_ anything, there is a good deal to be got out of it. If one cannot
be a genius one can at least be an artist. I have never had much cause
to be as direct as stage lightning, but as I enjoyed it I suppose I may
infer that even brutal frankness is not foreign to my nature. Perhaps,
like father, I am a snob at heart and liked the sensation of a sort of
artistic alliance with the British aristocracy. Well, if I develop
snobbery I can root out that weed--or persuade myself that some other
motive is at the base of a disposition to adopt any of the
characteristics of this people: a woman can persuade herself of any
sophistry she chooses. Not for anything would I be a man. Absolutely to
accept the facts of life, even the ugly unvarnished fact itself, and at
the same time to invent one's own soul-tunes--that is to be a woman and
free!"

A printed square of card-board on her writing-table had informed her
that the dinner-hour was half-past eight. She looked at her watch. It
was five minutes to the time. Once more she peered into the glass, shook
out her skirts, then sought a door in a far and dusky corner. It opened
upon a long dimly lit corridor which led into another at right angles,
and Isabel presently found herself at the head of a staircase similar to
the one on her side of the house. Here, too, the walls were hung with
portraits and landscapes, and as far down as the eye could follow; but
after glancing over them for a moment with the recurring weariness of
one who has seen too many pictures in the hard ways of European travel,
her eyes lit and lingered on the figure of a young man who stood on the
landing, his back to her, examining, with a certain tensity, a canvas on
a level with his eyes.

"Uncle Hiram--John Elton Cecil Gwynne! What a likeness and what a
difference!"

The young Englishman's hair, pale in color and very smooth, was worn
longer than the fashion, the ends lilting. As he turned slowly at the
rustle of descending skirts, this eccentricity and his colorless skin
made him look the pale student rather than the gallant soldier, the best
fighter on the hustings that England had seen for five-and-twenty years.
As Isabel walked carefully down the slippery stair she veiled her eyes
to hide the wonder in them. She had expected personality, magnetism, as
a compensation for nature's external economies. His apparent lack of
both made him almost repellent, awakened in Isabel a sensation of
antagonism; and the cool speculation in his light gray eyes merely
accentuated his general dearth of charm. True he had height--although
his carriage was unimposing--his head was large and well-proportioned,
his nose and chin salient, but the straight heavy mouth was as
contemptuous as a Prussian officer's, and in spite of his grooming he
looked old-fashioned, absurdly like the Uncle Hiram who had been a
country lawyer and farmer, and had always worn broadcloth in the hottest
weather--except, to be sure, when he wore a linen "duster," or sat on
the veranda in his shirt-sleeves, his feet on the railing.

However, she smiled, and he smiled politely in return, advancing a few
steps to meet her. "I hope you have heard of me," she said. "Your mother
is so busy--English people are so indifferent to details--I am your
cousin, Isabel Otis--"

"Of course my mother has spoken of you. I am very glad to see you in my
house," he added, hospitably. "Shall I show you the way?"

He made no further remark as they descended the darker section of the
stair, and she could think of nothing to say to him. Nor did she
particularly care to think of anything, the American in her resenting
his lack of effort. But as they reached the door she paused abruptly.

"I forgot! Miss Thangue asked me to knock at her door--"

"You take us too seriously," he said, with a slight sneer. "Flora has
evidently forgotten you; she came down a quarter of an hour ago."

Isabel lifted her head still higher, annoyed at the angry blood that
leaped to her face. "I am afraid I am rather literal," she said, with
more hauteur than the occasion demanded. "But perhaps you will tell me
where to go. There seems to be a bewildering number of rooms. After
three years of lodgings in Europe, to say nothing of the modest
architecture of Rosewater, I feel as if astray in a maze."

"You got that off as if you were a masquerading princess," he said, with
a flicker of humor in his eyes. "Americans generally bluff the other
way." He opened the door. "We meet here in the hall. There is my mother.
You are not obliged to speak to her, you know. We are less formal in
life than in novels." With this parting shot he left her abruptly and
joined a small dark woman with a plebeian face, a sensual mouth, and
magnificent black eyes.

"The rude beast!--Julia Kaye, of course." But Isabel forgot them both in
the novelty of the scene. The square white hall was lit with wax-candles
and shaded lamps, and filled with the murmur of voices--beautiful
gowns--the sparkle of jewels. Isabel dismissed the memory of early
trials, the long years she had lived in the last three, her philosophic
resignation to the disillusions and disappointments with which her
liberty had been pitted; it was her first appearance in the world of
fashion--which she entered, after all, by a sort of divine right.
Trepidation was undeveloped in her, and when she had stood for a moment,
quite aware that her proud and singular beauty had won her instant
recognition, she walked over to her hostess.

No fresh demand was made on her courage. Lady Victoria's earlier mood of
colossal indifference had been dissipated by her son's return. She
greeted Isabel with a dazzling smile and a winning gesture.

"Isn't Jack a darling? Isn't he a dear?" she commanded. "I have put you
on his left, that you may be sure not to be bored. What hair! That is
_your_ legacy from Spain. I have the eyes, but I never had a foot of
hair. I hope you are comfortable. I expect you to remain a week. I am so
glad that Jack will be here. The place is intolerably dull without him."

Isabel, warming to such maternal ardor in a beauty whose years were
prematurely emphasized by a son as conspicuous as Elton Gwynne, summoned
a few vague words of enthusiasm. She was reproached politely for
wandering about England for two months before discovering herself to her
relatives; then, Lady Victoria's interest waning, she turned to a young
man, handsome and Saxon and orthodox, and said, casually, "Jimmy, you
will take in Miss Otis."

Dinner had already been announced. The twain, in complete ignorance of
each other's identity, walked through a long line of rooms, almost
unfurnished but for the scowling or smiling dead crowding the walls.
Isabel decided that she would be as effortless as the English and see
what came of it. The practised instinct of the American girl, added to
the excessive hospitality of the Californian, would have led her to put
her companion immediately at ease, but not only was she fond of
experimenting with racial characteristics upon her own hidden
possibilities, but she was intensely proud, and the English attitude had
stung her more than once.

"Why should I please them?" she thought, contemptuously. "Let them
please me."

Her companion betrayed no eagerness to please her; and during the first
ten minutes at table he talked to Gwynne about the late elections.
Evidently, he too had emerged from the political fray triumphant. Isabel
sat like a stately picture by Reynolds, and after her slow gaze had
travelled over the dark full-length portraits of the kings and queens
that had honored Capheaton, it dropped to the more animated faces in the
foreground. The men were good-looking, with hardly an exception; judging
by their carriage they might all have been army men, but as every word
that floated to the head of the table was political, they possibly had
followed their successful host's example and adopted an equally
intermittent career. One or two of the women were almost as handsome as
Lady Victoria, with their superb figures, their complexions of claret
and snow, that blending of high breeding and warm palpitating humanity
one never sees outside of England. But others within Isabel's range were
too haggard for beauty, although one had a Burne-Jones face and her eyes
gazed beyond the company with an expression that made her seem pure
spirit; but she too looked tired, delicate, curiously overworked.

Opposite Isabel was a tall buxom young woman of the purest Saxon type,
who was talking amiably with the man on her right, and occasionally
shaking with deep and silent laughter; her intimate casual manner, her
slight movements, her accentuation, manifestly bred in the bone.
Suddenly it was borne in upon Isabel's always sensitive consciousness
that she was the only haughty and reserved person present, and she felt
provincial and laughed frankly at herself. The lady across the table
claiming the attention of the host, she turned to her own partner. Her
black eyelashes were long, and under their protecting shadow she swept a
glance at the card above the young man's plate. It was inscribed, "Lord
Hexam." She saw her opportunity and asked, ingenuously:

"How can you be a member of the House of Commons?"

He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By
contesting a borough and getting elected."

"But I thought a peer could not be in the House of Commons."

"He can't."

"Then how can you be?"

"I am not a peer." He looked very much annoyed.

"But you are Lord Hexam."

He answered, sulkily: "I happen to be the son of a peer."

"Are you irritated because I know nothing about you?" asked Isabel,
cruelly. "Do you suppose I have wasted my time in England reading
Burke?"

"No, there are too many sights," he replied, more cruelly still.

"They are far more interesting than most of the people I have met." Then
she changed her tactics and smiled upon him; and when she smiled she
showed a dimple hardly larger than a pin's head at one corner of her
flexible mouth. For the first time he looked under her eyelashes into
the odd blue eyes, with their dilated pupils and black rim edging the
light iris. He suddenly realized that she was beautiful, in spite of the
three little black moles on her face--he detested moles--and smiled in
return.

"I am afraid I was rude. But I am really shy, and you quite took it out
of me. I am more afraid of the American girl than of anything on earth."

"How did you know I was an American?"

"By your accent." He laughed good-naturedly. "Now I am even with you."

"Well, you are. Californians pride themselves upon having no accent."

"Oh, it is not nearly so bad as some. But it is there all the same. Not
a twang nor a drawl, but--well--every country has its unmistakable
stamp."

"Well, I have no desire to be taken for anything but an American," she
said, defiantly. "A Californian, that is. After all, we are quite
different. But we do have an appalling variety of accents in the United
States. I have lived abroad long enough to discover that. When I am an
old maid I am going to mount the platform and preach the training of the
voice in childhood. I have taken a violent dislike to more than one
clever American man merely because he trailed his voice through his
nose. I don't mind our vices being criticised as much as our crudities."

"I never before heard an American girl make a remark that indicated the
least interest in her country--even when--pardon me--they brag. They
generally give the impression that they don't even know who happens to
be the President of the moment. Somehow, you look as if you might."

"I was brought up by a man, and my uncle was a great politician in a
small way. That is to say he was identified with country politics only,
but he and my father were everlastingly discussing the national issues.
Of course you have only met girls from the great cities, where the men
are too busy making money to take any interest in public affairs. The
women rarely hear them mentioned, practically forget there are such
affairs--except on the Fourth of July, which they resent as a personal
grievance. I have met scores of them in Europe. To know anything of
politics they regard as the height of bad form."

"Sometimes I wish that our women would let them alone for a while. That
is my sister over there," indicating the lady with the Burne-Jones face.
"She has worn herself to a shadow working for her husband, who is in the
House, and she is heart and soul in politics--which she regards as a
sort of divine mission. She is on several committees, is far more useful
to her husband than his secretary, for she has the gift of style--and no
one would accuse Rex of that--and during an election she never rests.
Besides which, of course she has her little family, the usual number of
establishments to look after, and great social pressure. I always
maintain that our women are of immense service to us, but many of them
are physically unfit. I expect to see my sister go to pieces any day,
and as she is little short of an angel it worries me."

"She does look angelic," said Isabel, sympathetically. "Is that what is
the matter with the rest of them?--the thin ones, I mean?"

"Generally speaking. The thinnest is my cousin. I went in for a cup of
tea a week or two before the end of last session. There were several of
us about the tea-table when a footman entered and muttered something to
her, and with a vague word of apology she left the room and did not
return for half an hour. I thought the baby must be dying, and was about
to ring, when she reappeared and remarked that she had been sitting at
the telephone listening to a paper her husband had just finished on one
of the questions before the House. Some of them stand it better." He
indicated a fair beautiful creature with a determined profile and deep
womanly figure. "There is Mrs. Sefton, for instance. She presides at
committee meetings--she is great on colonial politics--for three or four
hours at a time, and always sails out as fresh as a rose; but she has
buried her husband and entertains when and whom she chooses. Lady
Cecilia opposite understands politics as well as any woman in England,
but does not go in for them--Spence isn't in the House; that may account
for it!"

"Your fashionable women do not in the least resemble ours," said Isabel,
meditatively. "They are far more like the women of our small towns."

"What!"

"It sounds paradoxical, but it is more than half true. Say two-thirds;
the other third is all in favor of your women, for obvious reasons. But
those I speak of, the best women of every small town, are constantly
active in civic affairs. Most of the sanitary improvements and the
educational, all schemes for parks and better streets, come from them.
There is no village too small to have its 'Woman's Improvement Club.'
And it is the women that have saved all the historical buildings in the
country from destruction."

"I thought they went in for Browning Societies."

"Doubtless you would scorn really to know anything of American humor.
Perhaps our comic papers have never heard of the Improvement Clubs, or
find nothing in them that is humorous. Not that I would decry the
Browning Clubs, nor any literary clubs, however crude. It is all in the
line of progress. 'Culture' is a tempting morsel for the jokemaker, but
as an alternative for dull domesticity and the vulgar inanities of
gossip it is not to be despised."

"By Jove, you are right," said Hexam, not without warmth.

"Is my fair cousin converting you to something?" asked the host. His
voice had been little heard, and he looked sulky.

"Cousin?"

"Yes, he is my cousin," said Isabel, with the accent of resignation.
Hexam laughed. Gwynne looked as if the grace of humor had been left out
of him. Isabel, innocent and impassive, turned her eyelashes upon her
partner. "I was quite wild to meet my cousin," she went on, in the
toneless voice that contrasted so effectively with her occasional
extravagance of speech; "and now I find him the precise image of my
uncle Hiram, who never spoke to me except to say: 'Little girls should
be seen and not heard,' or 'Run off to bed now, little one.'"

Without repitching her voice she yet infused it with a patronizing
masculinity that once more startled Hexam into laughter, and caused a
silent convulsion in the massive frame of Lady Cecilia Spence.

"She knows that was a bit of vengeance," thought Isabel. "But of course,
manlike, he'll never suspect it." She turned her deep thoughtful gaze
full upon her cousin. His eyes were glittering under their heavy lids.
He replied, suavely:

"I hope you will find us more polite--if less picturesque. I cannot
flatter myself that my likeness to your uncle Hiram extends that far.
'Precise image'--is not that perhaps a bit of national exaggeration?"

"Well, I take that back," said Isabel, sweetly. "But you really might be
his son instead of his second cousin."

"Perhaps that accounts for a good many things," said Lady Cecilia. "You
know, Jack, I have always said there was something exotic about you. You
are much too energetic and progressive for this settled old country. If
you had been born in America I suppose you would have been president at
the earliest moment the constitution permitted."

He hesitated a moment, then delivered himself of a bombshell. "I was
born in America," he said.

His eyes moved slowly from one stupefied face to another. "As I left at
the age of five weeks I can hardly claim that the incident left an
indelible impress. But the fact remains that I should be eligible for
the presidency if I chose to become an American citizen."

Isabel looked at her relative with an accession of interest; he had
suddenly ceased to be an alien, become in a measure a personal
possession. "Come over and try it," she said, impulsively. "_There_ is a
career worth while! A young country as full of promise as of faults!
Think of the variousness of achievement! England's history is made. If
you are all they claim, you might really make history in the United
States. If I only had a brother--" Her eyes were flashing for the first
time. "However--they say you love the fight. It is far more difficult to
become a president of the United States than a prime-minister of
England, for with us family influence counts for nothing."

"I am afraid I

Question: Summarize the above passage in exactly 500 words and give a brief outlook on it.