hy
American, and his sprightly and beautiful wife. The Colonel was a clever
man, rather stiff in his deportment, and grave in speech, but by no
means without a vein of dry humour. By the French he was esteemed
a high-bred specimen of the kind of grand seigneur which democratic
republics engender. He spoke French like a Parisian, had an imposing
presence, and spent a great deal of money with the elegance of a man of
taste and the generosity of a man of heart. His high breeding was not
quite so well understood by the English, because the English are apt to
judge breeding by little conventional rules not observed by the
American Colonel. He had a slight nasal twang, and introduced "sir" with
redundant ceremony in addressing Englishmen, however intimate he might
be with them, and had the habit (perhaps with a sly intention to startle
or puzzle them) of adorning his style of conversation with quaint
Americanisms.

Nevertheless, the genial amiability and the inherent dignity of his
character made him acknowledged as a thorough gentleman by every
Englishman, however conventional in tastes, who became admitted into his
intimate acquaintance.

Mrs. Morley, ten or twelve years younger than her husband, had no
nasal twang, and employed no Americanisms in her talk, which was frank,
lively, and at times eloquent. She had a great ambition to be esteemed
of a masculine understanding; Nature unkindly frustrated that ambition
in rendering her a model of feminine grace. Graham was intimately
acquainted with Colonel Morley; and with Mrs. Morley had contracted one
of those cordial friendships, which, perfectly free alike from polite
flirtation and Platonic attachment, do sometimes spring up between
persons of opposite sexes without the slightest danger of changing their
honest character into morbid sentimentality or unlawful passion. The
Morleys stopped to accost Graham, but the lady had scarcely said three
words to him, before, catching sight of the haunting face, she darted
towards it. Her husband, less emotional, bowed at the distance, and
said, "To my taste, sir, the Signorina Cicogna is the loveliest girl in
the present bee,* and full of mind, sir."

[*Bee, a common expression in "the West" for a meeting or gathering
]of people.

"Singing mind," said Graham, sarcastically, and in the ill-natured
impulse of a man striving to check his inclination to admire.

"I have not heard her sing," replied the American, dryly; "and the