Just after leaving the breakfast table, Rowan had chanced to overhear a few words of conversation between Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame and one of the lady habitues of the house on whom she was aiming to make a tremendous impression; and those few words had fully revealed one of the leading points of the parvenu's tactics. Some one had told her, apparently, or she had read the statement in so-called "polite publications"--that no one could be fashionable, now-a-days, without having been "abroad"--_i. e._, without having made at least one tour in Europe. Now that Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame _had_ been abroad, at least so far as beyond the Atlantic, at that very early period before she left the paternal cabin, pig and potatoes,--seemed the most probable of allegations; but in the matter of actual travel, or of those substitutes for travel which may be found in a thorough acquaintance with geography and a close study of guide-books and the best travellers, the poor woman had been as guiltless, a few weeks before, as the most stay-at-home and illiterate of her early acquaintances. But she could read, which was something, and had no conscience worth speaking of, which was something more. Perhaps some one had told her the traditional story of Tom Sheridan and his father, and the wonder which the latter expressed that the former "could not say that he had been down into a coal-pit without really going there." The worthy lady, as Rowan soon discovered by a few desultory words, had no corresponding objection, provided she could _seem_ to have been anywhere; and there was little doubt that she had procured a guide-book or two and "read up," as Honorable Members very often do before making speeches on subjects of which they know nothing whatever,--and as snobs sometimes do in books on "Perfect Gentility" and the "Whole Art of Dining Out," before going into society which seems a little too weighty for their previous training. How well she had succeeded, may best be illustrated by a little of her conversation with the Illinoisan, who took care to introduce the subject of her "travels" (with what he had overheard, as a hint) very soon after the wagons rolled away from the Profile, and without waiting for any formal introduction. He broke the ice with the remark, equally tempting and flattering to his next neighbor: "You must enjoy this fine scenery very much, madam, as you have chances of comparison that some of us lack. You have travelled in Europe, I believe?" "Yes--yes, sir," answered the lady, a little doubtful which of the two was the proper answer to so profound a sentence. If she was at all nervous about plunging into such untried waters with a total stranger, his disclamatory hint of his own experiences reassured her; and besides, one of the ladies was on the seat immediately behind, to whom she had been boasting that very morning, and it would never do to abandon the ground once taken.