Darrell realized the first moment that he held Elizabeth in his arms and floated with her to the languorous waltz music, that he had never really been in love at all before; but, as he frankly confessed to himself, it was all up with him now. He knew not who or what she was, but it could make but little difference to him. He loved her and he knew it. He would have liked not to leave her side once during the evening, and in fact he was near her most of the time and danced with her six times. Pelham, on the contrary, only sat out a single dance with her, as he was not a dancing man. He too felt a charm about her which he had never known in any other woman. Sitting out dances with young ladies had been a species of torment to him, but not so this time. He thought the charm that Elizabeth exercised over him was that she was the first of all unmarried English–speaking women that he had known who was perfectly and entirely at her ease with an unmarried man. She assumed an attitude openly and yet most delicately flattering towards him. He had known Englishwomen of fascination who were entirely at ease with men, but never flattering; and he had known other women who were very flattering to men, but never at ease with them. Here was a woman who treated him with the frankness she would have shown towards a younger brother, with the confidence she would have shown a respected elder brother, and with the deference she would have shown the greatest Duke in England. Pelham rightly judged that here he had met the true American type. A woman with an ancestry of gentle people, dating back two or three hundred years, and developed in a country where respect for women is so insisted upon as to be professed by those who neither believe in it nor practise it,—as such Elizabeth was to him the most interesting woman he had ever met. He was himself a reading man, and Elizabeth Brandon at twenty had read only a few books, but these were the English classics and they had given her the capacity to talk to a reading man like Pelham. He foresaw that at thirty Elizabeth would have read a great many books, and with the untrammelled association with men of all ages and in the free American atmosphere, her mind, naturally good, would have developed admirably.