“It seems an embarrassment,” said Malbone. “But it is supposed that fashion perforates the eyelids and looks through. If you attempt it in any other way, you are lost. Newly arrived people look about them, and, the more new wealth they have, the more they gaze. The men are uneasy behind their recently educated mustaches, and the women hold their parasols with trembling hands. It takes two years to learn to drive on the Avenue. Come again next summer, and you will see in those same carriages faces of remote superciliousness, that suggest generations of gout and ancestors.” “What a pity one feels,” said Harry, “for these people who still suffer from lingering modesty, and need a master to teach them to be insolent!” “They learn it soon enough,” said Kate. “Philip is right. Fashion lies in the eye. People fix their own position by the way they don’t look at you.” “There is a certain indifference of manner,” philosophized Malbone, “before which ingenuous youth is crushed. I may know that a man can hardly read or write, and that his father was a ragpicker till one day he picked up bank-notes for a million. No matter. If he does not take the trouble to look at me, I must look reverentially at him.” “Here is somebody who will look at Hope,” cried Kate, suddenly. A carriage passed, bearing a young lady with fair hair, and a keen, bright look, talking eagerly to a small and quiet youth beside her. Her face brightened still more as she caught the eye of Hope, whose face lighted up in return, and who then sank back with a sort of sigh of relief, as if she had at last seen somebody she cared for. The lady waved an un-gloved hand, and drove by. “Who is that?” asked Philip, eagerly. He was used to knowing every one. “Hope’s pet,” said Kate, “and she who pets Hope, Lady Antwerp.” “Is it possible?” said Malbone. “That young creature? I fancied her ladyship in spectacles, with little side curls. Men speak of her with such dismay.” “Of course,” said Kate, “she asks them sensible questions.” “That is bad,” admitted Philip. “Nothing exasperates fashionable Americans like a really intelligent foreigner. They feel as Sydney Smith says the English clergy felt about Elizabeth Fry; she disturbs their repose, and gives rise to distressing comparisons,--they long to burn her alive. It is not their notion of a countess.” “I am sure it was not mine,” said Hope; “I can hardly remember that she is one; I only know that I like her, she is so simple and intelligent. She might be a girl from a Normal School.” “It is because you are just that,” said Kate, “that she likes you. She came here supposing that we had all been at such schools. Then she complained of us,--us girls in what we call good society, I mean,--because, as she more than hinted, we did not seem to know anything.”