“I mean you and me and my poor husband and Dr. Feeder,” said Mrs. Freer. “I don’t see how there can be commoners where there aren’t lords. It’s the lord that makes the commoner, and _vice versa_.” “Won’t a lady do as well? Our Lady Barb—a single English girl—can make a million inferiors.” “She will be, before anything else, my wife; and she won’t on the whole think it any less vulgar to talk about inferiors than I do myself.” “I don’t know what she’ll talk about, my dear Jackson, but she’ll think; and her thoughts won’t be pleasant—I mean for others. Do you expect to sink her to your own rank?” Dr. Lemon’s bright little eyes rested more sharply on his hostess. “I don’t understand you and don’t think you understand yourself.” This was not absolutely candid, for he did understand Mrs. Freer to a certain extent; it has been related that before he asked Lady Barb’s hand of her parents there had been moments when he himself doubted if a flower only to be described as of the social hothouse, that is of aristocratic air, would flourish in American earth. But an intimation from another person that it was beyond his power to pass off his wife—whether she were the daughter of a peer or of a shoemaker—set all his blood on fire. It quenched on the instant his own perception of difficulties of detail and made him feel only that he was dishonoured—he the heir of all the ages—by such insinuations. It was his belief—though he had never before had occasion to put it forward—that his position, one of the best in the world, had about it the felicity that makes everything possible. He had had the best education the age could offer, for if he had rather wasted his time at Harvard, where he entered very young, he had, as he believed, been tremendously serious at Heidelberg and at Vienna. He had devoted himself to one of the noblest of professions—a profession recognised as such everywhere but in England—and had inherited a fortune far beyond the expectation of his earlier years, the years when he cultivated habits of work which alone (or rather in combination with talents that he neither exaggerated nor undervalued) would have conduced to distinction. He was one of the most fortunate inhabitants of an immense fresh rich country, a country whose future was admitted to be incalculable, and he moved with perfect ease in a society in which he was not overshadowed by others. It seemed to him, therefore, beneath his dignity to wonder whether he could afford, socially speaking, to marry according to his taste. He pretended to general strength, and what was the use of strength if you weren’t prepared to undertake things timid people might find difficult? It was his plan to marry the woman he desired and not be afraid of her afterward. The effect of Mrs. Freer’s doubt of his success was to represent to him that his own character wouldn’t cover his wife’s; she couldn’t have made him feel worse if she had told him that he was