nection with an historic patriciate, a class that, in
turn, also confusedly, represented an affinity with a
social element that she had never heard otherwise
described than as " fashion." The supreme social
element in New York had never known itself but
as reduced to that category, and though Milly was
aware that, as applied to a territorial and political
aristocracy, the label was probably too simple, she
had for the time none other at hand. She present
ly, it is true, enriched her idea with the perception
that her interlocutor was indifferent; yet this, indif
ferent as aristocracies notoriously were, saw her but
little further, inasmuch as she felt that, in the first
place, he would much rather get on with her than
not, and in the second was only thinking of too
many matters of his own. If he kept her in view
on the one ham! and kept so much else on the other
the way he crumbed up his bread was a proof
why did he hover before her as a potentially inso
lent noble? She couldn't have answered the ques
tion, and it was precisely one of those that swarmed.
They were complicated, she might fairly have said,
by his visibly knowing, having known from afar off,
that she was a stranger and an American, and by
his none the less making no more of it than if she
and her like were the chief of his diet. He took
her, kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaima-
bly, for granted, and it wouldn't in the least help
that she herself knew him, as quickly, for having
been in her country and threshed it out. There

[[169]]

p168 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p169w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p170

v?