The Jack Brokenshires were jovially non-committal, letting it go at that. In offering the necessary good wishes Jack contented himself with calling me a sly one; while Pauline, who was mannish and horsey, wrung my hand till she almost pulled it off, remarking that in a family like the Brokenshires the natural principle was, The more, the merrier. Acting, doubtless, on a hint from higher up, they included Hugh and me in a luncheon to some twenty of their cronies, whose shibboleths I didn't understand and among whom I was lost. As far as I went into general society it was so unobtrusively that I might be said not to have gone at all. I made no sensation as the affianced bride of Hugh Brokenshire. To the great fact of my engagement few people paid any attention, and those who referred to it did so with the air of forgetting it the minute afterward. It came to me with some pain that in his own circle Hugh was regarded more or less as a nonentity. I was a "queer Canadian." Newport presented to me a hard, polished exterior, like a porcelain wall. It was too high to climb over and it afforded no nooks or crevices in which I might find a niche. No one ever offered me the slightest hint of incivility--or of interest. "It's because they've too much to do and to think of," Mrs. Brokenshire explained to me. "They know too many people already. Their lives are too full. Money means nothing to them, because they've all got so much of it. Quiet good breeding isn't striking enough. Cleverness they don't care anything about--and not even for scandals outside their own close corporation. All the same"--I waited while she formulated her opinion--"all the same, a great deal could be done in Newport--in New York--in Washington--in America at large--if we had the right sort of women." "And haven't you?" "No. Our women are--how shall I say?--too small--too parochial--too provincial. They've no national outlook; they've no authority. Few of them know how to use money or to hold high positions. Our men hardly ever turn to them for advice on important things, because they've rarely any to give." Her remarks showed so much more of the reflecting spirit than I had ever seen in her before, that I was emboldened to ask: "Then, couldn't you show them how?" She shook her head. "No; I'm an American, like the rest. It isn't in me. It's both personal and national. Cissie Boscobel could do it--not because she's clever or has had experience, but because the tradition is there. We've no tradition."