I had sometimes seen Miss Montenero distressed by the rude manner in which she had been stared at. I had seen her colour come and go, but she usually preserved a dignified silence on such occasions. Once, and but once, I heard her advert to the subject in speaking to her father, when Lord Mowbray was not present. “You see, I hope, my dear father,” said she, “that I am curing myself of that _morbid sensibility_, that excessive susceptibility to the opinion of others, with which you used to reproach me. I have had some good lessons, and you have had some good trials of me, since we came to England.” “How much I am obliged to those persons or those circumstances, which have done what I thought was impossible, which have raised my daughter in my opinion!” said her father. The look of affectionate approbation with which these words were pronounced, and the grateful delight with which Berenice heard them, convinced me that Lord Mowbray had completely mistaken his ground--had mistaken strong sensibility for weakness of mind. It now appeared, to my entire satisfaction, that Miss Montenero was really and truly above the follies and the meanness of fashion. She did not wish to be acquainted with these fine people, nor to make a figure in public; but she did wish to see the best society in London, in order to compare it with what she had been accustomed to in other countries, and to determine what would be most for her future happiness. Through the friendship of General B---- and his family, she had sufficient opportunities of seeing in public, and enjoying in private, the best society in London. Lord Mowbray, therefore, had no power over her, as a leader of fashion; his general character for being a favourite with the ladies, and his gallant style of conversation, did not make the impression upon her that he had expected. He did not know how to converse with one who could not be answered by a play upon words, nor satisfied by an appeal to precedents, or the authority of numbers and of high names. Lord Chesterfield’s style of conversation, and that of any of the personages in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, could not be more different, or less compatible, than the simplicity of Miss Montenero and the wit of Lord Mowbray. I never saw any one so puzzled and provoked as was this man of wit by a character of genuine simplicity. He was as much out of his element with such a character as any of the French lovers in Marmontel’s Tales would be tête-à-tête with a Roman or a Grecian matron--as much at a loss as one of the fine gentlemen in Congreve’s plays might find himself, if condemned to hold parley with a heroine of Sophocles or of Euripides.