Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other TalesJames, Henry
General
Lady Barbarina, The Siege of London, An International Episode, and Other Tales
James, Henry
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Europe -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Lady Agatha was at present staying for a little change with Mrs. Lemon,
and such adventures as that were part of the pleasure of her American
season. The house was too close, but physically the girl could bear
anything, and it was all she had to complain of; for Mrs. Lemon, as we
know, thought her a weird little specimen, and had none of those
old-world scruples in regard to spoiling young people to which Lady
Agatha herself now knew she must in the past have been unduly sacrificed.
In her own way—it was not at all her sister’s way—she liked to be of
importance; and this was assuredly the case when she saw that Mrs. Lemon
had apparently nothing in the world to do, after spending a part of the
morning with her servants, but invent little distractions—many of them of
the edible sort—for her guest. She appeared to have several friends, but
she had no society to speak of, and the people who entered her house came
principally to see Lady Agatha. This, as we have noted, was strikingly
the case with Herman Longstraw. The whole situation gave the young
stranger a great feeling of success—success of a new and unexpected kind.
Of course in England she had been born successful, as it might be called,
through her so emerging in one of the most beautiful rooms at Pasterns;
but her present triumph was achieved more by her own effort—not that she
had tried very hard—and by her merit. It wasn’t so much what she
said—since she could never equal for quantity the girls of New York—as
the spirit of enjoyment that played in her fresh young face, with its
pointless curves, and shone in her grey English eyes. She enjoyed
everything, even the street-cars, of which she made liberal use; and more
than everything she enjoyed Mr. Longstraw and his talk about buffaloes
and bears. Mrs. Lemon promised to be very careful as soon as her son had
begun to warn her; and this time she had a certain understanding of what
she promised. She thought people ought to make the matches they liked;
she had given proof of this in her late behaviour to Jackson, whose own
union was, to her sense, marked with all the arbitrariness of pure love.
Nevertheless she could see that Herman Longstraw would probably be
thought rough in England; and it wasn’t simply that he was so inferior to
Jackson, for, after all, certain things were not to be expected. Jackson
was not oppressed with his mother-in-law, having taken his precautions
against such a danger; but he was certain he should give Lady Canterville
a permanent advantage over him if her third daughter should while in
America attach herself to a mere moustache.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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