“I wish I could marry an Englishman,” she said, with her little pout, “I have had so many offers from my own countrymen but not one from an Englishman--I think it is too bad! Of course I shall marry again, I’m so feminine and I hate work--I always am so amused when the critics rave over my quick brilliant style and verbal felicities; I grind out every sentence and hate the very sight of the paper. I want to marry a rich man who will pet me and leave me nothing to do but to be charming and to dress exquisitely. That is all a woman ever was made for, not to write tiresome books that other people think clever. Of course, I am glad I am such a success; but I’m sure I’d a great deal rather be you. You look the real thing, and we are all just creditable imitations. I am sure I was English once--in a former state--I feel so _at home_ when I am in one of your old castles, surrounded by people who are all that I should like to be, and I am such a success with them; I could not be more so if I were to the manor born; I am sure I cannot understand why some flower of nobility has not fairly flung himself and his hereditary acres at my feet.” All this before Bertie, and it reads like the most engaging candour; but as she fairly breathes insincerity and self-consciousness one does not believe _anything_ she says, and I think she knows it. When she left, I asked Bertie if she was feminine enough to suit him, and he said that she was a cat, whose proper place was in a fancy basket in the drawing-room; no English Tom, at least, would ever invite her on to the roof. Bertie is coarse at times, but nobody can deny that he is expressive. Polly, are these people merely snobs? What do you make of them? You write me, you dear thing, that my letters are profoundly interesting to you and that I pop the people I meet right into your imagination. I am so glad, for they certainly interest me. It is like living in a novel--an American one, it is true, but fresh and new, and full of unsolved problems to the mere outsider. They certainly are not snobs in the old meaning of the word, not in the least like those of their country who work so hard to be taken up by us, and imitate our manners and pronunciation. No, they are either snobs and something more, or not snobs at all, but a different manifestation of the struggle for the Ideal. That sounds better, at all events; let them go at that.