The lady threw at Gerard the apprehensive glance with which she greeted everyone who approached her whom she did not know well. He looked at her narrowly, but there was nothing in the least suspicious about her; she was a plain-featured, motherly woman who gave the impression of being more used to a simple, homely style of life than to the state which now surrounded her; and the gentleness with which she evidently tried to live up to the new life prepossessed him in her favor. She smiled at him rather shyly, and invited him to take a seat beside her. “I’m new to this,” she said, with a strong American accent, as she poured him out a cup of tea; “to all this company, I mean. I’m used to a quieter sort of life altogether; and your smart British society folks make me shiver some!” “Well, I hope you won’t look upon me as belonging to the people who make you shiver,” said Gerard, much taken with her gentle looks and her homely form of speech. “So you don’t like us, Mrs. Van Santen, so much as your friends on the other side of the Atlantic?” “I don’t say that,” replied Mrs. Van Santen, in the slow drawl which Gerard found rather attractive. “I’ve no doubt many of the people who frighten me because I’m not used to them only need to be better known. But it’s just this, Mr. Buckland, when you’ve been used to a quiet, homely kind of life, and you get suddenly plunged into a livelier sort, why, it takes you time for you to feel your feet, you know!” “Of course it does. But why should you be forced to lead anything but the kind of life you like, and you’re used to?” “Well, it’s like this,” said the good lady confidentially; “you Britishers think a mighty deal more of the dollars than folks do over on the other side!” “What!” cried Gerard in amazement. “We always think it’s the other way about!” She shook her head shrewdly, and brushed back the braids of her grayish hair, which she wore parted in the middle and done in a severely plain knot behind. “I never knew the value of money,” she said emphatically, “till I came over here. Where we come from there are many who have money, and nobody thinks much of us; but over here we find friends among the smart people, and yet there’s nothing to make us stand out from other folks!” “I think there is, by what I hear--and what I see,” added Gerard courteously. “Your younger daughter, Miss Cora, has a voice that we very rarely hear except on a professional platform, and everyone says you give entertainments which are unique.” She laughed. “I don’t see anything so special about them,” she said simply, “except that perhaps we’re not so stiff as you English people. But I should have thought that was against us, instead of being in our favor!” He laughed.