“That woman epitomises the charm of Washington life to me. First, she is unlike any woman I ever saw before; that is in itself a charm. Then, she has an environment; that, too, is new to me. I went to see her four times last winter.” Then he mentioned where she lived. “Her parlour--I mean drawing-room--was nothing compared with the others I’d been in here, but it was distinctive. It wasn’t furnished from bric-à-brac shops and art-sale catalogues. All the antiques came from her own family--all the miniatures and portraits were her own kinsfolk. And, after having lived in Europe for twenty years, as she told me--because she doesn’t mind mentioning dates--and having seen more of European society than one American woman in ten thousand, she loves and admires her own country, and came back here to live the first minute she was free. That struck me all of a heap, because, though you wouldn’t judge so from my Fourth of July speeches at Circleville, I should think that Europe would be something between Washington and Paradise.” “You haven’t been there yet,” was Thorndyke’s response to this. And then Crane proceeded to tell a story which Thorndyke knew by heart. “It seems, so I heard from other people, she was brought up by an old crank of an aunt, who had married a Baron Somebody-or-other in Germany. This old feminine party tried to make Constance marry some foreign guy, and when she wouldn’t, the old lady, in a rage, made a will, giving all she had to Constance on condition that she did not marry an American. It was thought the old lady wasn’t exactly in earnest, but unluckily she died the week after, and so the will stands--and that’s why Con--Miss Maitland never married, I guess.”