she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed
to commend herself to Miss Acton. Lizzie struck her as positive and
explicit almost to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent
incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh,
Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy.
It was a source of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it
should seem to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a
trifle more of a nonentity; for Eugenia had hitherto been conscious of
no moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins.
It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie's pertness that she very soon
retired and left the Baroness on her brother's hands. Acton talked a
great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain
and bric-a-brac. The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made,
as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to
being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious
mixture of alertness and inattention. If there had been any one to say
it to she would have declared that she was positively in love with her
host; but she could hardly make this declaration--even in the strictest
confidence--to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure
that had some of the charm of unwontedness to feel, with that admirable
keenness with which she was capable of feeling things, that he had
a disposition without any edges; that even his humorous irony always
expanded toward the point. One's impression of his honesty was almost
like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but
they were occasionally an inconvenience. One could trust him, at any
rate, round all the corners of the world; and, withal, he was not
absolutely simple, which would have been excess; he was only relatively
simple, which was quite enough for the Baroness.

Lizzie reappeared to say that her mother would now be happy to receive
Madame Munster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment.
Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation of
impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on that ground
she could easily have beaten her. It was not an aspiration on the girl's
part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference
to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced
woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillo